The Sea Chews Things Up, Cleopatra Mathis

“At my feet I found a grave of starfish,

broken and gnarled among the fleshy

snipes and heads. Every shade of death

covered the sand. It looked hopeless

in the pale day but for the birds,

a congress of gulls, terns, and the rarest plovers,

calm for once, satiated, a measure of

the one law: this sea will claim it all—

feed them, catch them, grind their complicated bones.”