Newly Hatched (poem)

Newly Hatched

You and I newly hatched

In sun warmed shallows

Floating as the current takes us

A wave and then a thousand waves

Thrown against us

Our grain of sand is a shoot of sea grass

Blue light breaks overhead

Our eyes and ears assaulted

A savage foot and a twin-cycle engine

The sand is smoothly graded

And the pilings hammered in

You and I have every right

I can borrow if I like

Early sunrise when the crowds are thin

And the tide is out

Salt air rank with sewage

Seaweed strewn along the shore

At peace, nostalgic for

Some delusion, some conflation

Of ancestry and memory

And fiction

Tells me I will live here one day

Municipal entities don’t mind about

Malthusian principles

You and I have enemies

Our future security

Faces a sad uncertainty

Not our fault

The population tends to be greedy

Easily abstracted

Growing in proportion

Can you float away

With the world on your back

Noise

(2014, Stephanie Foster)