Seabird

Poetry by Charles Tarlton

Just there, where the breezes off the Sound
meet and slide over cooler air lying
on the Coastal Lowlands, seabirds
separate.
                      The soaring osprey ordains ocean
and sand, the vulture oversees the woods.
Seabirds are by convention gull and tern,
sea-crows, and quick sanderlings, but I’ve seen
blackbirds and finches pecking at red
rosa rugosa hips alongside the sand dunes.
The seabird flies between
                      Scylla and Charybdis.

Charles Tarlton‘s poems have previously appeared in Rattle, Blackbox Manifold (UK), London Grip (UK), Ilanot Review, Gone Lawn, 2River, The Journal (UK), and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles and lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.