Kemil Beach in January
 
Gulls scream, whet razors on the sky.
They glide with wind, labor against wind
that cuts out from the dunes,
that rasps a scrim of dry sand
across the wet border, back to the water
where all things seek their origins.
 
After summer's flaws and imprecisions,
this stripped calculus:
shift, and a mussel shell cracks underfoot---
sown along the world's edge,
intricate little mememti mori.
 
This ancient staring into the surge, mind
diffusing numb and broad, a breath in space.
And the ashes from campfires,
driftwood with a gnarl of fishing line through its fingers.
 
No one could have imagined all these doors closing in the deep.
Breakers climb and fall, lifting wave wrack,
setting it down, over and over different and exact.
Form out of the chaotic swirl,
and again,
form out of chaos.