On The Outer Islands: Pointe Au Baril

These precambrian humps and folds

Solid on the water's astonishment of colour

Conceal magicians of survival;

Some numerous as motes,

Skittering in and out

Of their submersible shadows

With twitched precision

And indivisible demands;

Others, sly to our sight

Watch us unwatching,

Meshed in the sparse foliage

And stretched silences.

There is something stumbling here.

In all this life sublated;

What seems so still if you listen

Is listening too, charged

With cool stony caution.

We however, clumsily human,

Caught in this present tense

Of our minds autonomy,

Are the least of predators,

Wholly above our history

And the frail image

Of our failing sight.