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Gary LeBel

Vowel

Can it be the same bird I saw yesterday drifting alone across the windrows at the river's mouth? Out beyond the breakwater lies the western edge of its realm: an empty, windswept island withdrawing slowly from a day that glitters off the ocean.

I had watched the bird yesterday as I do today, admiring its ancient look in silhouette, its trailing wake of a long and slender sentence without a period, and I stay until the diving accent grave of a lone, warm vowel slips quietly away into the river's ink.

trusting in tides—
in the lightless depths,
the cormorant