Absolution

The wind is a trapped bird entangled in distance,  
a refugee gull blown inland by a category two storm.  
That angers her, because in younger years  
it would take a five to separate her from the shore.  
 
She hovers over McDonalds and Rite Aid for processed energy  
to sustain her flight home, diving for concrete water life:  
fries rolling like eels between cars and hamburger buns  
opening like clams from warm-waves of the sun.  
 
Sometimes resentment gives way to memory: hermit crabs,  
platoons of foam capturing the beach and sandpipers  
defending against a navy of tourists. She hears the sea  
under the sound of a tire when it rains, puddled waves  
of mud slamming against the jutted cleft of a curb.  
 
Deep in dark she forgets the drunken alley and dumpstered  
potluck, the sewer smell and sound of shattered glass, crack  
of rat bone between the teeth of a cat, and waxes like the tide  
into a sunrise of five am over a fishermen gutting a pike  
to deeply ingest the smell of blood before waking to ask,  
 
'Is that what forgiveness would taste like?'  
 
~