Their Gaze
Nick Conrad
Their gaze does not focus on
the pelican’s sudden drop
into the churning sea,
wings clasped to his side, beak now spear,
nor on his re-emergence
seconds later unsated.
They do not see how quickly
his wings catch the wind, returning
him suddenly to some
unseen perch. Nor his plunge
once more into the waves;
nor his feasting. It is not
that their eyes are averted,
they just do not look up from
their ceaseless scan of the wave
washed beach. Like giant flightless
shore birds bent on sifting sand
for conch or shell, seeing
in such some token, they walk
to, fro, while the pelicans,
just now in single file, glide past.
Nick Conrad’s poems appear in national and international journals, including Orbis, Southern Poetry Review, Blueline, Borderlands, Badlands, Blast Furnace, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and the Kentucky Review, among others. A chapbook manuscript was a recent finalist in the Texas Review Press’s 2017 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. A book length manuscript was a semi-finalist for the WordWorks 2017 selective May reading period. His poetry has also appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Mid-America Poetry Review. Other anthology appearances include You Are Here: New York City Streets in Poetry by P & Q Press and 911 Poetry: Reflections on the September 11th Tragedy, published by Circle Publications and Plan B Press, 2002.