Comeback for snowy plover
O lesser flake of feathers, O downy
shore-winged picker of cockles
and mites, twig-legged runner through ripples,
who was it called you out of extinction
to life and flirt again with the waves?
Who missed you enough to amend
your habitation? Who restored you,
winging you back to the beaches of our lives?
What urgent impulse then spirited you—
you in your dappled egg—to break shell,
chick stirring in shallow sand-scrape,
lifting to fly the salt wind, rising in drifts
over wild surf, your pinions
riding the breath of God?
