Atonement

Stranding, they call it— when a throng 
of them find their way to a silt-colored beach, 
one following another. They form a dark 
huddle in shallow water, where they 
will perish as a body, where afterward, 
no one can remember one without calling 
forth the pulsing images of the others. 
A tale for our times, a thread in our chronicles 
of waning. As in strand, braid loosened
from its stalk; curl descending from the vine
where hard green marbles cluster before
it comes time to thrash them underfoot.
It is the soft bodies we mourn most, their
gleaming—before they're pinned to the loam.