Sunday Afternoon at Bolsa Chica

The fish bubbles, pelicans dive
     —A form of communication,

An energy exchange, something retained;
     Fish jumps for joy, birds dive for play,
And the river swallows it whole,

     Into its endless lines of code,

Where the learning goes on, in the shadows

     Of dim worlds and relations scarcely imagined.

The cormorant slips below the surface, seemingly 
     Non-existent until it reappears
Like some sporadic comet crown,
     Magnificent in the sun.

Soon the shorebirds will relieve them,
     Long bills exploring the mud flats

With the vengeance of a sports nerd
     Poring over Elias long-dried stats.

Two ripples and a lift on takeoff. A laconic
     Glide and two brisk wingsnaps back.

The feast in between is of looking,
     Eyes bird-wide, not the elusive
Wait of decoys, nor the sudden plunge to crab,

     Which is inexplicable as effect,
One might as well say

     They were merely hungry.

The photographers are watching as well, learning

     To eye as the birds,

But with a different moment to capture, when 

     The lenses are unwrapped, 

Tripods turned tight, just like talons reaching down 

     Into the darkness.

Their equipment is of different sizes, for different

     Purposes, just like these birds—

Those who wrangle with the shoreline, and those who
     Use each inch of sky to land their point.

Some gape at prey, while others say

     "It is too far away."

One never knows what goes into these strategies,
     Except that decisions are made

In the wave of the doing, guided

     By a higher right:

The crisply timed lift, the perfect aperture turn,
     The angle and frame smoothly executed.

They wait on what the flow will deliver,

     Cooper's hawk or sleeping duck.

One of them waits for the perfect shot,

     That can live beyond the clock

That won't stop, but can be stilled if he can

     Be still long enough 

To know the difference between vying and sharing. 

     It's hard for the others sometimes to tell,

The line between comrade and competitor is known

     Only to the combatants, not the dilettantes

With smaller lenses, the Sunday painters of the scene, 

     Who come for a day away from what they know

And are expected to learn, who take it in

     As only watching

The egrets lope along the salt grass,

     Awkward before the entire outside world

That prompts them to rattle one's horn at another 

     Or stride away in the peaceable mud,

To charm the snakes with their hypnotic gait

     Or flap their capes at the others in sport,

To follow or strike out on its own, spread its long

     And elegant wingspan of breathtaking white.

     

It's but another day of learning, how it feels to be

     A flash of light on the deep, reflective blue.

The lessons are something important to retain 

     Even though they're immediately forgotten, 

Something permanent, although unrecoverable

     In another cycle of sun.

The world will appear the same, tomorrow,

     Though everything will be new, irrevocable.