Mono Lake at Sunset

        by Marc Pollitt

The pelicans have ordered a recall
from their daylight bomber missions
and fled to their island rookery.
Their unlikely silhouettes
filled the sky throughout the liquid afternoon,
floating and drifting over the water,
and occasionally falling
like hanged men through
the lake's trap doors into billowing clouds
of doomed brine shrimp.
It is sunset.
The pelicans' sorties are done, and their flight groups
have returned to base in unbroken formations
and with no losses to their crews.

I stand at the shoreline and wait for the clamor
of an "all clear" siren, but none is heard;
I breathe deep the evening air,
thinned by elevation, yet heavy
with alkaline sultriness.
I study the jagged tufa towers,
the lake's stone skeleton,
built across the lives
of a million generations
of indifferent sea birds
and scattered like debris in Dresden.

The lake is a mirror
reflecting bloodied clouds.
From the south, a breeze
shivers wavelets onto the glass,
and a solemn squadron of pelicans
skims the water's surface.

 

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©2001 by Marc Pollitt, all rights reserved