New Morning
The sky today overcasts the somber surface of the bay and reaches out forever, all the way to the winter barren marsh grass, to the pencil-line horizon, to the gunmetal clouds that overhang the water and on and on to Rome where the new Pope mingled amongst penitents in the crowded basilica displeasing his security detail and onward all the way to the Antarctic where the sea ice is waning and waxing each year deciding if it will continue or extinguish and back all the way back to Vermilion Bay where the seabirds and the v-line of ducks migrating north ignore the tower light at Cypremort point, the lucid call of the big sphere's pull driving the migratory push northward, all the way to the fisherman in his skiff, gliding across the surface setting course by the blinking tower light, leaning into the wind, holding onto the cross of his rosary around his neck as he adjusts his bearing and wonders if the white smoke and new pope will somehow bring a good catch in his fish traps, today.
Published: Southwestern Review, ULL press, 2014.