Salthouse

When we walked up the hill above Salthouse
and saw, looking down where we’d been,

ourselves on the beach waving –
we were here and there and no-place,

coming and going at once, perceiving
the speckled clouds as sleeping seals;

we dipped our toes in the breeze
and watched from the hill’s shoreline

a kestrel come in with the tide
and hold his stillness open

over the ship weathervane
of a church that was floating and drowned –

his shadow on the ground beneath him
the anchor that kept him aloft.

Robert Stein