From Across the Bay
Robert Wallace

Egrets, icy on storm-ink blue
that darkens lightly every instant,
thread homeward, flapping, in straggling lines,
in bunches, They are as startling white

as the waves the wind lips on the bay’s
black-green toward us, their great wings leafing
air as they come long-leggedly dropping
into the pale salt marsh’s tufty

windrow cedars, to sit like candles
on the storm’s limbs, white, wing-fluttered.
The rain when it comes will drench them,
the dark pinch them out, as it batters

and wrestles runneling at our windows.
Clearings hacked by lighting will show
them– wet, white half seconds. – still there:
asleep, waiting, a kind of certainty.