Photo by David Hargreaves
Comfort Zone
North Spit, Coos Bay, Oregon
Four-wheelin’ tire-track donuts scar
a pristine Oregon winter beach,
smoothed by the tide’s retreat—
obscene, you might think,
but not to the habitat threatened
Snowy Plovers. Camouflaged
as broken clam shells, hunkered down
in wet-sand depressions, only the tops
of their heads appear
above the tread-mark trenches
serving as wind-break from brutal storms,
as cover from predatory falcons,
as the one safe place to gather warmth
from a fickle New Year’s sun.
David Hargreaves’s translation of The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets by Durga Lal Shrestha, Nepal Bhasa’s most famous living poet, appeared in 2014. His book of poems Running Out of Words for Afterwards was published by Broadstone Books (2022). Other poems appear in a wide variety of contemporary journals. davidjhargreaves.com