Reflections on water and shifting sands

Text and photos by Peter Vankevich

The island’s windy tonight
The tide too high, again spills over the dunes
Upon the road beyond the pony pastures
The moon, brightly glimmers
Its reflection where it should not be.

The lighthouse also gleams upon rising waters
Lurching reflections between past and present
Clarity and blackness – bleakness.

Gone is the serenity of listening to blowing red cedars
Lying in bed, the window open
I used to imagine the wind was the ocean’s crashing waves
Now I hear both, wind and breakers rising and lowering.

Is it sadness or anxiety that makes me ponder
The changes that may break us into many islands?
Last spring the Laughing Gulls and Least Terns watched,
Waited for tides to mark their high points; mated, nested
Later were helpless when swirls and foam
Brought fright and flight, all lost to sea.

So ask, as moonlight fades in and out of fast moving clouds
Is there any sense of beauty that shrouds this loss?
Not some rolling fog, but a mist of change.