The Salish Sea

I could sit all day
on the beached bones of this exiled tree
drinking bits of shattered sun
caught in the chop of the bay,
there where the red knots huddle
in their plump grey suits stitching the new mud

Such peace in the inaccessible waters,
a tonic for the fever of rancor and ruin
Breezes sighing in the grasses
then softly in my ear, the language of mystics
And herons cloistered like monks
over the brackish pools musing the virtue of voles
A sundry of beating hearts and rustling blades

All is well in my world
where the only voices are my own,
extolling what my eyes conceive
I try not to judge the starlings exploding
from the blackberries,
on queue, I think, keen to swoop
down and roust the flighty knots
to dump their purple shit