Rathlin Island

Here, where field drops to sea,
where big applause, beginningless,
of surf and gulls drowns the fledgling
speeches fluttered from the stage
our entrance made this gray-green into:
properties and features turn
to charges that our presence is
assertion, groundless, unconfirmed
by rocks and waves that turn aside
their gaze or merely
stand. A man might fall. A bird
falls a fall, grasping strands
of world we cannot, threading world
into world as loosened from one
place, anchored to prey, it
bends, taking itself under
what its seeming rupture takes
away: what sudden wave-trough surface
might have returned a face.