Returning

Like an old gull,
his life's one love long dead,

I wing far above the screaming flock,
idle on drifts and scraps
of wind,

against the sky silent and blue,
roaming the lonely hemisphere,
its mists and miles
compassed in this span of wings—

without pause,
thought, or comment, the ocean's fathoms
lose themselves behind me.

My eye swallows
the horizon's flat line
rather than the endless bump
and squabble of society.

Trading one confusion
for another.

A flash of light
from a breast clear white,
seen once and not again, I go.
Time is my possession now,
distance is what I eat, and eternity
is what I feed.

Dawn. Standing on the empty strand
eyes half closed,
with flowers of foam rolling in
as they always have,
as if remembering;

grey as the sea-fogs
giving birth to this winter sun,
I am returning
in a broken circle to you.