“Painters Settle the World for Us”
—Eamon Grennan
Not that it moves too quickly
but we do, blurring the given –
hands, say, an apple, or
how in the vast Pacific of its momentum
a wave wind made and kept glides miles
until first it rasps over depth offshore,
friction lifting that gravity’s center and roll,
foam riding, outlier gulls and cormorants
riding, gray skies muting the green, silver
banishing the blue, as ever yet the rock
and sand-smooth continental shelf
lifts towards shore the swell’s point
taller where a thin boil begins
then roils, widening at the top, whiter
and west, a bulk lifting its curve,
thinning as a raw gust catches
that topmost agitation and makes of it
a cast off, half-transparence
until the whole risen motion,
all it is and will be, unable to gather higher,
unable to hold much farther, hesitates
along a slow descending arc, a hollow
brown pelicans, sweeping south,
love their wings to tease.