A photo of mine taken not far from where I saw the birds that inspired this poem.
Wild Impermanence
by Jacob Edelstein
Just before last light,
seven shadows glide across
a mile of Pacific
Ocean in front of
me. I don’t see
them well, though I
feel sure they’re Brown
Pelicans: fourteen stocky bodies
and wing shapes bowed
and now backlit, cutting
arcs through three knots
of southwesterly wind. I
know this, I think,
because I almost see
it. Or I see
it, and then cast
it as knowing to
dispel impossibility.
It’s just that from
this cliff, the group
seems more than only
itself: reflections, too, multiplied
and split over the
lilt of water under
drooping sun. I lose
track of individuals, peering
to watch both them
and their mirror-selves scrawl
faint trails over a
surface that itself changes,
softly undulates, returns. One
dives and grabs at
a fish and I
feel rife with indecision:
unmoored by the wild
impermanence of the world
outside language
unsure why I want
to assert control and
wondering about the
hollow spaces inside me.
Their light bones, I
know, impose structure without
suggesting meaning. If I
could do that, maybe
I could fly, too.