Below the loose cliffs, where the wet fist knocks,
lacy seas surge over the raised knees of cleft rocks
and the chasing shadows as the loons dive and climb,
dark forms easing seaward in the slow thighs of time.
Rounding the point, the loons line low over gray waves,
urgent black notes undulating across sea-staves,
an unvoiced evocation of their lake-sung ululant cry.
Loons lining north under the vast, soft rhythms of sky.
The boneless mists lapse onto the lake, diverge, retire
into silhouette cedars. Foretold in the eyes' dark fire,
the loons, slow forms, low, drift away, with fog coalesce.
At the shore, tense needles of spruce, on end,
motionless.
Ice forms and the thick heads lift. South the quick bore
through chill wind. One unknowable pulse pulls
at the core
of the purposed loons. This dark blood of earth,
that sings
along unseen veins of necessity on hot heartbeat
of wings
