The Ocean Beach Pier
Whole families casting lines
Into black water
*
The restaurant
Is so well-tended the birds
Go elsewhere to eat
*
In the lobster tank
The piled-up lobsters seem dead
Or to be dreaming
*
Through binoculars
The cars moving on the bridge
Seem barely to move
*
Slender cypresses
A Roman poet called you
Candles of darkness
*
The coyote lopes
Down the street in the evening
His ribs prominent
*
The rapacious owls
Rest till dusk in the tall trees
Above tiny skulls
*
Every hour the bell
In the Catholic belfry
The pine is heedless