Melanie McCabe

Dawn Breaks

Marauder gulls have been here;
broken crosses pock the sand
before the sun burns off the prints.

The moon’s tug tossed the waves
again and again like wet dice,
looking for that lucky roll,

but the sea is unknowable.
Bottomless. It is where God hides
from the long white blankness

on the other side of the pinprick stars.
Sand turrets trickle into dunes
and the wind stings hard with flung grains

but the sea is a secret being kept.
The gulls divebomb and the bubbles break
over and over in a crown of foam.

Melanie McCabe

is the author of three collections of poems, most recently The Night Divers, as well as a memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Georgia Review, Threepenny Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many other journals.