The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by J. Stephen Rhodes

Terns

Today when I was walking on the beach,

a winter wind forgot it was still fall

and tore in, tossing up bay laurel skirts,

sent sea oats chasing after their hats.

Waves yanked and hammered, dissolving mudflats,

the sea now valleys, now mountains that burst.

They say the world means change—your life, mine, all.

The soul keeps searching for leeward calms in reach.

Like many, gulls clung to the sand,

beaks to wind, wings tucked in. Black skimmers

looked like nuns kneeling at a burial plot.

It was the terns who refused to withstand

or fight against the storm, but rather shimmered

and danced, accepting what the weather brought.