Ruth Gooley’s most recent poem to appear here was “Mockery” (November 2019).
Meal Time at the Pier
By Ruth Gooley
On a post at the end of the pier
a pelican, clown-foolish with
short stumpy legs and an oversized beak,
her black pebbled eyes
alert to the passage
of people and fish.
Silly looking, until,
flesh of the wind, she grabs
hold of the sky, soars,
plummets to the surf, stunned mullet,
sheepshead and silversides threshing about
in that great dip net of hers.
She rises, water skimming away
from her pouch, her wings, her back,
searches the sea, the land,
leaves in her wake
a wash of air,
an audience on the pier.