Time-Stamped

188 total words    

1 minutes of reading

The survival of the piping plovers offers an . . . argument

for the . . . importance of the Endangered Species Act

                                  —Chicago Sun-Times, August 13, 2019

Plover chick, we’re here on this city beach guarding you

dawn to dusk these peak days of summer, a ragtag flock

of giddy birders telling your story to passersby who

can’t get enough of you (we love their oohs and ahs).

Today, you’re all business at the big lake’s shore

away from dad and sibling who rest in the nearby grasses.

I watch you skirt the surf, picking up grub in the sand,

trying your wings before the tug of the long trip south.

Montrose Beach, by Angela Just

A photo time-stamps you—that fierce little eye

of yours!—captures your shadow, precise as the one

I cast on the sand, the one saying I’m here now under a sun

that finds me worthy of comment. Plover chick, the sun

finds us both singular—alive and curious as we are—

endangered as we all are under its wide and dwindling eye.

 Image credit:
Montrose Beach, by Angela just

  • Angela Just

    Angela Just writes of nature and its people from an apartment above the lake and trees in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. Her chapbook “Everything I Own” was published in 2016 by Porkbelly Press. Her poems appear in Bird’s Thumb, Flyway, Free Lunch, After Hours, MAKE, Seeding the Snow, and other journals. Fifth Wednesday Journal has featured her photography.

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