—for Stanley Kunitz

Beyond his garden
and down the long path
above which herring gulls
toss like angels
and through the tall
spartina and beach plums,
he sees what for a hundred
years he’s come to see:
evening setting the water
aflame; a hermit crab
waving its one good arm;
a cormorant diving
and surfacing and diving
again; a rowboat waiting
as if for its ferryman;
and the moon, like a coin,
on the horizon.