As the light comes up, first shorebirds come in
one by one to tip the steepled granite
where surf breaks black to blue to white,
then their kin fill in quietly below
as a stream’s bustle spills the tide sideways and slips
a bleached herring bone from its windowpane stone.
Plumes of gold bottle grass never enlighten
the igneous char and tilted slate,
nor do cormorants believe in the squall,
gravid kelp swales or sardines shivered down,
just as lizard and rock have different knowledge
of each other, yesterday, the gutted cliffs, the sun.
You may find you aren’t needed, which is not the same
as unwelcome, and there is an order without design.