Poems by Paul W. Jacob

Still Pink Form: A Meditation on Hunger

(Tampa Bay, Florida)

by Paul W. Jacob

From Canary Spring 2023

Paul (Jake) lives nomadically with his wife Jess. They met and were married along the Ashland Creek Watershed in Southern Oregon. The original land stewards of this beautiful area in the midst of the Siskiyou Mountains were the Shasta people, or "Kahosadi," which can be translated as plain speakers.

Down in the mangrove,
a roseate spoonbill
stands hunter still
on what looks like
one tall, thin leg.

At sunrise, the spot it wades in
was a spongy tan land oasis
bustling with scads of minuscule
side-walking black crabs.

Now, the tide is in,
sheltering oysters and conch
under its dull, milky, undulating late morning shimmer
that flows and heightens effortlessly
in between the clumped together spider-leg root stalk
planted in the tepid tidewaters.

Beyond the tree line,
within earshot of traffic
traversing the slender I-60 isthmus
of black heat-wave concrete,
several marine grey dorsal fins
breach the surface of the saline shallows
in a playful circular formation.

All these worlds, this organic drive,
occur beyond my 6th floor window:
the air conditioning, smoked salmon, and jazz records.

Still, almost imperceptible
in the silky blond spring light
among the lush, tangled mangroves,
its pink, slender, stoic form,
a roseate spoonbill stalks the drowned oasis,
waiting, for a shadow
to move into the light
of its hunger.

Previously published in the author’s collection: Nomadic Devotion: A Contemplative Inquiry into the Poetics of Place.