Up here among the gull cries <br />we stroll through a maze of pale <br />red-mottled relics, shells, claws <br /> <br />as if it were summer still. <br />That season has turned its back. <br />Through the green sea gardens stall, <br /> <br />bow, and recover their look <br />of the imperishable <br />gardens in an antique book <br /> <br />or tapestries on a wall, <br />leaves behind us warp and lapse. <br />The late month withers, as well. <br /> <br />Below us a white gull keeps <br />the weed-slicked shelf for his own, <br />hustles other gulls off. Crabs <br /> <br />rove over his field of stone; <br />mussels cluster blue as grapes : <br />his beak brings the harvest in. <br /> <br />The watercolorist grips <br />his brush in the stringent air. <br />The horizon's bare of ships, <br /> <br />the beach and the rocks are bare. <br />He paints a blizzard of gulls, <br />wings drumming in the winter.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/magnolia-shoals/
