Sand and Ice

Daylight: life burrows out and up. A common but no less uncommon tern swoops past bubbling edges. There, a cormorant, black as ash, gathers the sun in its arcing wings. Prehistoric pelicans cling clumsily to a pocket of air, then fall like rocks, shattering through undulating surf as the red-shorted lifeguard hooks his gaze onto distant thighs smothered and scented with coconut . And the dimwitted sandpipers peck at the straggling sunburnt seaweed, and finally, late as usual, the seagulls arrive. Out there on the frozen plain the ice is breathing. Beneath the floes the water streams faster, further; sun rays race atop glinting surfaces; unsuspended ice unfurls below a red fox pattering berg to white berg. Life froths anew. Yawning bears scratch and stretch and lumber toward meat. Mayflies flitter away abbreviated lives on a nanosecond of love while still in flight. Hurrying toward their beginnings, salmon muscle past the ocean’s currents. And here, when the soft shoots release winter's hold, the hidden pheromones of humans begin to seep.