The Puffin

And they said: A farce. A painted toy soldier. 


Unreal.


The beak like a Vegas billboard,

a parrot’s geometry against the foaming tide.


    "Et tu?" he whispers from the cliff.

    "Who art thou to judge this form?"


A wanderer from Ithaca,

lost his way in Troy, drifted on an Arctic wind

to the ice-floes,

he wears a coat of exile.


    Do not mistake the Buster Keaton grin.

    The mind is la forza, the Iron Bird.

 Above: the dark lords, Skuas, dive like Stukas.

Below: bus sized squid turn tides bloody.

He brings back the paycheck:

Capelin,

Herring,

Sprat.

Handfuls of silver coins pay the bills.


Wings beat like stunted oars,

a mini-seaplane rising up basalt walls,

raising the daily bread 

for the brood.

No lamentation. No complaint.



The little ones sleep beneath stone,

and he, in his silent watch,

dreams of those 

old green fields

sloping down to the tranquility

of waves lapping melodic shores 

 

 



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