The Chapel by the Sea (poem)

The Chapel by the Sea

Hands appear to dust themselves

Before he goes, he shines his shoes for luck

The engine catches

Like the young auk that plunges from the cliff

Wings with rigid traceries of struts

Shed the hatchling’s rasping gracelessness

And soar

Find palpable contours in the invisible, climb steppingstones

Each alike, one hand, the right

Holds the hat, each face tilts back and sees the flyer

And the flyer sees

Men and women resemble iron bells

In their heavy-coated sable fur and melton wool

One fat rodent slowly edging to its burrow

Earthly motion syncing oddly with his own

A cinematograph that films in black and white

The dunes alive at altitude

for their autumn blighted grass has at the root

A green undying heart, their eyes

It startles him that from this height he sees―

Shivers at the nape as though he’d stumbled on a body

The sloop broached to by gale winds

She is near capsize

He passes

the shore again, the chapel by the sea

Small enough to burst beneath a mailbag

You Click

(2016, Stephanie Foster)