An abalone in a pail,
Large and lonely and muted,
Sits in a galvanized jail. While
Its own mortared shell, gray-hued,
Hides delirious light:
Amassed motes
From years of labor
Imbued iridescent.
Now hauled from home,
Sublittoral,
By an eager boy who works up the slope,
Bright and whistling
Through the serpentine,
The outcrops above the ocean
Where the Mendocino cypress barely cling,
Closed-coned and bending.
A flycatcher lifts and flits,
Startled,
With a quick trilling cry.
So small and then gone
To redwoods high.
Oh, gray-green passerine,
Take me with you
On your little barred wings~~
While in rooms below,
Counterpaned in black and white
Of the new night,
Ruby slippers gleam,
Lustrous sheets glacier up,
then flow.
