Bathes the white sheet in umber, thinking only
Of the blue eyes and how to realize,
On the seagull, what may not even be.
The endlessness of sky must become a horizon
As the variations in spray must take some final direction,
But there's a place for nets and buoys, watercolors
In the empty space along the wainscot grey,
An immediate immortality
That can be cataloged in posterity
With baby albums and midget football trophies
And can temporarily wash away
The sense of obligation
Weighing on the week,
The ways that one's found wanting
In the things that others need.
Is there a grimace along that fine beak?
Some life in those eyes with the taxidermist glass?
Perhaps there's captured, at the moment of flight, the freedom
To go anywhere, before the familiar calls back.
