The pelicans are dreaming
as the sun rolls down
out of low clouds, to the side of the hill.
They are the advance team,
the rest to trickle in
over a darkening month or two.
Are they supposed to be here yet?
They are white enough to be ghosts of pelicans
in eternal migration,
just checking in, until the real pelicans arrive.
A stiff breeze off the spillway
makes for a struggle.
Legs burning, rounding the twist,
I am slowed by the skates of children,
their dogs on long leashes;
slowed long enough to glance
past one man and his five fishing poles,
to aureate slivers of mainsails at sundown
and a line of egrets, or shooting stars,
a foot above the water.
I hit 25 on an uphill climb,
passing a younger man at a thin place
in the road, where wild parakeets
build electric cradles to a 100 kilovolt hum
