Shoaling
	The cedars shiver the wind hoisted up, piles over the bluffs towering and the sober gulls glide slow down the wind, turning, shoaling in the cold air.
	I
	Beyond the window's panes the gulls return sliding south beside the cedared bluff. dusk darkened, cruciate, above the wind-stiffened surf and veiled rocks.    Then turn around and turn around    the old gray dog turns    so stiff around    turns and settles by the fire.
	II
	The wind driven waves turn inward on the rock's stretched bulk thrusting out of the sea, prostrate headland snouting the stacks like an ancient crocodile that has lumbered from shore and lies asleep in the long sun of star spin while the scaling cedars shade her earthy back and attendant gulls dip and keen beyond the point.
	III
	Here at Earth's western edge It was we that turned inward behind the cliffs, cut off from the gull's west wind, and drove pilings deep into the formless heart of sea. The docks went in and the mills ground down the Siva-limbed cedars into boards, fenceposts, rafters, and we came to settle this forested land.
	IV
	Above the spray where the reptile rocks downed straight to sea-surge we stepped among the high gulls upon the scaly haunches of stone to hoist out the stripped cedars, long logs lofted seaward to burden the waiting schooners leed in from land's end, and gentled the dutiful logs settling them to hold on the long swells of the indifferent sea.
	V
	Beyond our green walls, wars bred their strange litters. Sea-scarred and earth-shocked, the progeny settled turning the supple cedars hard with blood-signed memories, and Siva shook out sickened others who sought peace, seeding them into the turning forest to sprout their roller-bladed, nonchalant young.
	VI
	Yet the seas still turned around the south wind to oppose us, slipping in by the sleeping sentry on their white bellies to murder the gull-shadowed ships sheltering where we hauled them out onto the dock's cradled world. Ancient ships asleep in wheeled brackets, parked and rusting, shoaling on this split-timbered echo of the cedared land.
	VII
	We laid the rocky breakwater out below the loading bluff and wheeling gulls, flat-topped, put square to the sea, to turn the long waves where they bellied in toward the laden dock. But the waves still crawled on white veils, pregnant with sand, and they gave birth behind the seawall, and these children too stayed.
	VIII
	Their shoals emptied our harbor of the servile trees as we have emptied our servile hills, the spent cedars sent north and away to other ports. Now divers belly the white lace of wavy down plucking urchins and hagfish to feed the rude processing sheds where the roe must shoal and the eels dance away their skin for the lusting gulls.
	IX
	Unsubtle, yellow, scotch broom stands against umber earth, settling at roadside, vibrant in this gray world of gull's wind and men that will uproot the shaken cedars' tall green. Hundred-armed and doomed they guard the broom-yellow lights of the night dock and sleeping town where we have shoaled in the quietus we have made.
	X
	Beyond the panes, the windowed gulls turn and return gliding south along the siva-cedared bluffs, soft crosses hoist above rock and the doilying surf.    So turn around    and turn around.    The old gray dog turns    so stiff around.    Turns around and settles    at the hearth and fire.

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© 1997 Jess Morton