Tantramar, the river, deep, tidal
moving on a March morning, high as she goes
there in the banked and thrown ice
the leaking limits of the marsh
move free in their melting, leaving crusts
to the shudder of tidal might.
The sea-force moves and makes a landscape
empty in a winter season of searching birds,
it is a happening of nature we try to chart
and plot our way to nearer understanding
but it is the going on of the place
the floating-by of life, so close, so close.