Clouds sweep the sky of sun,
sweep the sea of bathers gone
like monarchs on an autumn day.

She sweeps the floor of memories,  dust, dog hair, the stuff of everyday
reason and rhyme, the stuff of looming, wind-swept grey clouds,
the stuff of the red rucksack  in the corner, crammed
with books, bones, and shells,  relics of lives lived and given over.

The sweep of horizon,
a brushstroke of blue
at water’s end,
cerulean above,
cobalt below,
blue on blue,
soothing notes
like Miles,
like The Moldau.

Sailing the thermals,
the osprey sweeps the sea
with its clear-eyed, yellow-eyed
gaze, searching, seeing,

it finds the fish,

telescopes in,

drops, momentum

a scream of speed,

hungry talons reach,

crash, an explosion of water,
it hits, grabs, catches its silver prey,
flaps, shivers, flies again
with flash of fins, scales

and tail, heads

to the high spot,

the top of the craggy old tree, eats,

sweeps the sky again.

Solstice murmurs its approach,
the pendulum swings
back toward winter—
white snow in the black night,
black crows in the white snow—
grey clouds sweep the sky.

Barbara Segal is a Sea Cliff–based poet and visual artist whose second collection, Shelter, blends nature imagery with reflections on what it means to seek refuge, a theme shaped in part by the COVID‑19 pandemic. A former visual artist who began writing haiku inspired by her childhood in Japan, she later expanded her craft through a women’s poetry group she calls her “poetry school.” Segal is also the author of The Secret Road: Walking with Persephone and is an active member of the Sea Cliff Poets.