the world is a mist...

Elizabeth Bishop

Sandpiper


The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

*

Bishop is a master of subtle motions. The music of her lines is never forced, is always natural to the ear. She writes in such a way - though with extreme deliberation, spanning decades on individual pieces - that the reader cannot imagine the lines unfolding in any other way.

The imagined world of a Bishop poem is always real and familiar - even if unkonwn to the reader. As a poet her gift is in detail.