generally things are mild
and tolerant at peripheries.
People bring bread the
pigeons eat greedily .
Robert Bensen
STANDING BY
Cutting inland, in earshot of the rustling sea,
stars making an exquisite multitude of souls
and the road a white bevel around this oval island,
we three tipsy citizens at the rim of the known world
spotted in the beam of our sole surviving flashlight
an impromptu floor show, starring a hermit crab curled
like a beckoning finger in his whelk suit
and one dead tree frog spread like a compass.
The frog was only one or two cars' passing away
from granulating into the sandy pavement.
The crab worked his polished claws into every tuck,
and for so little - for a morsel
of whatever kept the frog clinging to his branch
after he dropped out of the night and its chorus.
One of us recoiled from that dusty circle of light
and led the rest out into the omnivorous dark,
where what went on, went on in the low murmur
carried seaward by the breeze.
