Upper Texas Coast

The sandy shore absorbs another wave
rolled up and dropped like the morning paper.

A cormorant spreads wet wings in the sun as
a fish surfaces, then dives, without incident.

Black Skimmers rest on a sandbar out there,
Royal Terns and Ring-bills mixed in all cozy.

There’s a couple of White Pelicans too, and
they look like giants next to the skimmers and gulls.

I see Yellowlegs, both greater and lesser
and some wintering Black-bellied Plovers.

An Osprey is wading in the water near the gathering.
Since when do Ospreys wade in the water?

A Forster’s Tern hovers, dives, then halts
to hover again, her prey slipped away.

A single Spotted Sandpiper swoops in and lands
by some rocks on the shoreline near me.

It’s an immature lacking the telltale spots
so I move closer to get a better look.

These avian gods and goddesses abiding in their realm,
ignore me in my harmlessness, but no further.

I head back to the car to leave, bearing a sense
of voyeurism, an intimacy more taken than shared.

The wind spits a little sand in my face and
I suppose I have that coming.