Headlands

Robert Krieger

A sample poem from the book

Figure, Bicycle

Even the gulls cry water’s dominion:

From tidal-flats over granite beaches

Dunes shift inland. Ever to eastward

Angles drift as high as a sand-top lies.

Where rhododendrons, burning in a slough, blow to be buried,

Direction binds longing and distance.

Between Cape Blanco and unsighted forests

A man, bicycle, a ten-mile country of dunes

Are stage-props to the wind’s persistence.

In a haze of flutters, the eye holds nothing;

Wheels turn and grind back

Endless sandscape in a gritty silence.

Even the gulls drop like a question,

Blinding half the sky. Dune grass goes white.

If luckless winds never turn—face set homeward—

The wheel’s direction is his only keeping,

Riding, riding, the bicycle makes small distance.