Cape May at Dusk

At the cape, I stood alone on a platform
watching swans gather, mallards and herons,
and below me, a single rabbit, feeding itself
in the twilight on soft, newly mown grass.
I don't know why I'm still alive.
I don't know how a line of poetry
sometimes loses itself and finds me.
I don't understand why my body is drawn
to the marshes, or to the surf dragging
itself away from the shore.
Why does memory cling to the briny air,
settling in my hair like the sandy wind?
Ive wasted so many days in half-life
shopping. pop music, magazines.
I should have been thinking of holiness
and trying to find it-even on these humid
afternoons when there's space for image
but the air is too dense to grasp the form.
I stand and watch the rabbit, a lean
wild one, as it attends to its hunger,
till a little girl comes stomping over,
shrieking, and it disappears in the wild roses.