It's clear this place
is sacred. As if east
winds and early frost
once carved the softer

parts of these granite walls
into fissures meant simply
for safekeeping. As if those
who gathered here knew

it was a lasting space, where
life, surging forth, would
recede through veins of quartz
into an ageless bank of time.

The island birds, I believe,
especially love this spot-
I've heard their rollicking
call as they wheel overhead,

eyes pinned to the minnow's
shine, littering the tide-
washed rocks, over
and over again, one

hundred times a day,
with shattered skins
of mottled crabs and clams.
I love it, too-walking

old shores refurbished by time,
feeling life's forces at work, there
in the same crevices where those
before us left them.