Tela Purcell
Time upon time on my homeward run, a beauty ambush captures me.
Where ocean water and beach rocks meet, thrash and tumble,
October’s leaden skies colour high tide waves cold grey.
On shore they break in froth, a dance of ragged white. Sea winds rise forté,
crescendos vault the beach. Momentum gained, they thrum compliant weeds,
rough-comb seed from yielding sedge, pummel goldenrod until,
broken instruments, fallen plants lie crushed along the ways.
In pale contrast, bleached amber grasses crouch, cringe low to grip the earth,
while yet defiant, black-leafed holly, berry-burdened, wags its batch of brilliant scarlet fruit.
All clustered fluff in flight, wild white asters gone to curdled cream, their embattled stems
stand tall, face east before the wind, must bend or break.
Lime-tinted haze of Sweet Hay Fern, summer’s gift of scent in ditches,
waves of fronds like soft green seas, dry now to crisp-knit, cinnamon-coloured trails.
Over lonely common ground comes crow; zig zag driven low,
it hugs all red-flamed huckleberry shrubs, skims bedrock, dodges stunted spruce.
No caw rebounds, struggle stifles crow-speak.
Mischief-current-tossed, small black-feathered flocks flap and fly with old crow skills,
crab crosswind, trick homeward distance from wind shadow.
Aloof, voiceless, observant from above, lone seagull rides the upper air.
Longer, stronger winged than crows, it glides unruffled as no sound describes its seeming
lazy rise and fall on updrafts’ free propulsion.
Summer has turned her golden face aside. November threatens hangman on the stalk,
yet I will not twist and go, for where grey glacial rock is split again by foliage scarlet and bronze,
October’s signal fire, beauty, comes, goes, lies in wait, sleeps.
Here I live, breathe sea-tang in Nova Scotian air, pace the scoured slate, leap the narrow gaps.
In wind commotion lost, I commune with birds and weeds, caught, enrapt.