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Montauk Chiaroscuro
(For Jean)
by George Held

            A rock, hump big as a sea turtle,
            rides the tide by Montauk Point,
            lower half blacked by wet, upper whitewashed
            with guano.

            A great black-backed gull struts
            on the rock, head and breast white.
            A double-crested cormorant, black as
            ebony,

            lands beside him. They compose the black
            chop of sea, the azure sky with cotton
            cumulus on the horizon, the grey North Fork,
            the bleached beach.

            Along the strand six towheads, teens
            in black spandex shorts and white t’s,
            stroll, spy, not the vista, but a target
            for their stones. . . .

            The birds, the boys have flown. The clack
            of stone on rock yields its echo
            to the low hum of a distant
            fishing boat.

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