had ripped away sand and shortened beaches.
We were looking at one of the beaches.
It was narrow all right.
In what's called the distance, a humpback
whale lifted itself up, curved, went
back under, flipping its tail
in so doing: a thick, black Y.
Not incidentally at all,
a minah bird hopped onto grass
carrying a dead dragon fly.
The bird swallowed it,
taking the bulbous head first.
It stretched tall to get it all
down the pipe and expressed
liquid defecation in a quick
Latinate stream onto green.
We live inside a multitude
of dynamic systems, the man
said. He was homeless, and two
security-guards eyed him, us. That
we do, sir, I said. And
I gave him a fiver for his
journey, and everything changes form.
Hans Ostrom 2015