Early Morning Landing

The past few days when I've pulled up at the Bibliomanse there's a scent of water coming off the lake--and so a fourteen-line salute. To the April pull of beach and bay.


EARLY MORNING LANDING

by Charles Bruce

from Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets (2008).

Edited by Zachariah Wells.

In daylight, there is life and living speech;
The constant grumble, the resilient splash
Of slow tide lifting on a slanted beach;
And blowing sunlight. And the measured flash
Of the sea marching … But the beach and bay
Are vague as midnight now; in midnight thinned
At the sky’s edge by the first hint of grey.
And calm as sleep before the morning wind.

Calmer than sleep. But the eyes lift to find
In the veiled night the faint recurring spark
Of a known beacon. And the listening mind
Wakes in the stillness; and the veil is stirred
By a dim ghost of sound—a far-off word
And the soft thump of rowlocks in the dark.