Red kite spirals its compass of air
against the vacancy.
Cows softly work the grass to spoken-for milk
stealing under trees,
rearranging their black continents on lakes of white
cut-out clouds that sit on sky, pitcher than night
Crows sabotage everyone for fun
as gulls' ingested calls
break down to the dusty beach.
There, fingers of hushing foam touch calligraphic plastic
laid bright as paint on the shore.
Trying to read man's message
the water borrows one piece at a time
for its junk-island library.
Versions of us sit at the edge of the once-wooded valley,
that now brims with forbidding liquid.
Forest floor still quilted with life,
rocked not by the breeze but the tease of the tide.
We believe the horizon and wait,
studying the disc-thin door of the sinking sun.
Waves patrol the upsetting sea
but we are always just out of reach.
© Caroline Stockford
Bu şiir, Şakir Özüdoğru tarafından Türkçeleştirilerek Gard-9'da yer almıştır.