Babette Deutsch

1895 - 1982

Seascape

Assembling ways to glisten,
Immensity
Is fresh as paint, and friendly,
Like salt.
Until wind pleats it, the water
Spends mica's childish glitter.
At the end of the jetty, erect,
Domestic,
A herring gull
Is the finial on the newel.
He stares westward,
No more prospecting for dinner
Than a saint on his pillar.
Marking the tip of the cape, the lighthouse
Off there is the size of the gull,
Equally singular, equally white.
The hush that sparkles in the sun
Is noon.
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