Arpeggio

The First Mother,
new from the sea,
her soft feet swollen, scoffed
by shell, sand, bottlecaps.
No pressures on the strand
but hers and avoidance,
shaled up and treelined,
much like plank, shower
without rain, shot without
boulder. There was sting
in a scapula, maybe wing,
or a fallen off, planted there
and huddled against string,
algae’d and kelped.
So much so,
that cloud scaled like skin,
like bark, and birched
unwhitened pages hung
gull above her hair, her parapet,
her carapace, her basket
unwove by the wave
from which she come,
shattered as plate.
And in the eyes
of the First Mother,
the trees, beyond the first dune,
stricken and barred.
And in the ears
of the First Mother,
loon-mocked north
and quite out of reach,
while an owl, unseen
and billowed waits,
taloned, concave, tracked,
as she plucks foam
from her nails, as she
flies from her vertebrae.