the clear blue sky a hovering Narcissus
sets cerulean shapes undulating the whole estero
winking the sun seducing my eyes sweet waters from the land
pulsing into salt ocean slipping its way onto the land I sit on one bank
looking across wobbling yellow slits tight to this shore reflect cliffs
behind me opposite shade shines down liquid black sandy shore and open
water giving way to dazzling light in action
dark underwater blues deeper browns to fertile marsh
brown pelicans fly low fall in akimbo tripping over feet out taut
large floating group some drop half-folded wings loose skin cups air against
water not piston-swimming white pelicans herding fish this a rhythmic applause
varied, playful stops for silence fellow pelicans take up a new patterned patter
making a community music none feed, listening to each other’s versions—plaintive cry
a gull’s—pierces a long pelican pause leaving rings of room around its sound
more pelicans splash in, their own are clapping back more gulls kee-een into the
next rest pelicans wait and syncopate clap-cuba-tap-africa gulls scree-ee
each species receives the other’s new offering never in my thirty years here
over the minutes, the hour the numbers and sound expand birds
hundreds, a thousand their mass louder penetrating gull chorus shrieking
pelicans slapping raucous cacophony pushing out all silence,
enveloping me unease replaces my relaxed wonder mind
taken from me I turn my body away
a skinned stick rosy hint of sunset dancing on it
bright towers waver from now golden
cliffs on the other side about my time
to leave I notice from the quiet
time has moved on so have
the pelicans and gulls I am
only soft again a fresh-
feathered first-year curlew
in the landscape a
waterborne gull makes
wake swimming toward me
winds and currents push west
toward the sea, the sun at the end of day
massed wavelets bunch higher shift shadows, turn darker
I look back to the east the water is calmer oddly more filled with light farther
from the sun. a distant invisible fountain pouring upward tiny scintillations
here the sun is closer streaming directly at me begins to look night
all around a paralyzing beam’s dark halo the known world so
close and closing only the tkk’ings of a bushbird a bee
bumbling for gold come across on the still air
by Jen Sharda
Jen Sharda lives in the San Francisco Bay Area—its fine community of poets, easy access to nature, and liveliness in the arts nourishes her writing. Her work is forthcoming in Forge, Marin Poetry Center Anthology and Spillway. She attended Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s in 2014 and has attended the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference since 2010, working with Jane Hirshfield, Major Jackson, and twice with Arthur Sze. Jen joined David St. John’s Cloud View Poets classes in 2013. Jay Leeming and Carolyn Miller were early teachers.
