While I think of them they are growing rare <br />after the distances they have followed <br />all the way to the end for the first time <br />tracing a memory they did not have <br />until they set out to remember it <br />at an hour when all at once it was late <br />and newly silent and the white had turned <br />white around them then they rose in their choir <br />on a single note each of them alone <br />between the pull of the moon and the hummed <br />undertone of the earth below them <br />the glass curtains kept falling around them <br />as they flew in search of their place before <br />they were anywhere and storms winnowed them <br />they flew among the places with towers <br />and passed the tower lights where some vanished <br />with their long legs for wading in shadow <br />others were caught and stayed in the countries <br />of the nets and in the lands of lime twigs <br />some fastened and after the countries of <br />guns at first light fewer of them than I <br />remember would be here to recognize <br />the light of late summer when they found it <br />playing with darkness along the wet sand<br /><br />William Stanley Merwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shore-birds/
