Rynchops

by MOLLY KUGEL

With the dusk a strange bird came to the island from its nesting grounds on the outer banks.
—Rachel Carson, Under the Sea-Wind

It doesn’t matter who you love
but what you’ll do about it once you love them.
You traced the habits of the skimmer
so closely, minutely, with deference. 
You were unequivocally devoted,
like the bird’s devotion to water.
You knew the flight, the feeding, shape, story,
reading the archives of gust and lonely sea.
Rarely driven inland, nested on sandbars, 
shell banks, gravel roofs, a shallow scrape of beach.
Finding fish by touch not sight, foraging in calm water, eventide. 
You wrote every detail of midnight in their feathers.
You did everything you could.