Small deaths of the shores

Cetacean’s sun bleached bones beached on exposed intertidal’s floor,

waiting to be washed whence it came; invoking old lore and old tales.

Polymer rope, bright and yellow toxic, wrapping cervical vertebrate

belying the image of untouched wilds, despoiled coasts

—our hubris, mistakes, fatigue, neglect quietly on display.

.

Lying casually between grasses hibernating:

the vestige of gull’s wing separated from exposed spine of intact back.

In question: victim of a predator staving off its own end

or the seagull’s end founded from unfound cruelty.

The sand relays no evidence, keeping answers precious in confidence.

.

Circle of short diameter carved into sand, evidence of the grass gone missing.

Evidence of a life short lived on low lying dunes to be dusted away by breeze and wind.

Stability failed cultivation on fragile, moving land incapable of building a home

as the peoples’ dwellings encroach in futile exercise of unwarranted dominion.

.

Sands untethered pulled to sea; increments lost reveal impermanence.

Structures permanent permeating fragile grounds — wetland, tide line, sand —

torn, cracked, dragged just as it had stripped structural nature’s protections.

Loose substrate sacrificed foot by foot for select feet to trample

to trample biomes’ symbiosis through parasitic force unrelenting.