Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
Why We Have Pelicans
Forget about the beak,
the famous neck pouch,
and just watch them glide
one foot above their shadows on the water.
Salt. That’s the edge
you can smell in the wind.
And there isn’t
a bright enough word—
not sun,
not squint,
not your-hand-like-a-visor—
for the light reflecting off of blue.
There’s a line of them now…
maybe ten; no, a dozen…
like a sentence
from an unread book.
Chapter 1: So the sea made pelicans.
Chapter 2: They dipped their beaks
and hauled the shoreline up,
Chapter 3: then the grasses and animals.
And last of all us.
Rob Carney’s new book Facts and Figures is available from Hoot ‘n’ Waddle. Previous books include The Book of Sharks and 88 Maps. His first collection of creative nonfiction, Accidental Gardens, is forthcoming from Stormbird Press.Read Rob Carney’s Letter to America in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published by Terrain.org and Trinity University Press.
Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to an interview on Montana Public Radio about The Book of Sharks.
Header photo by paulbr75, courtesy Pixabay.
