Daybreak, Tofino Poem by John Beaton

The sand is of doeskin, the mizzle is bright
for the sun is a lamp above sleepwalking mist,
and the land intermingles with dimness—the night
still lingers, asleep on the rainforest's chest,
but is slipping away
in a luminous gray
from the hills and the headlands that hammock the bay
as its forehead is kissed
by the light.

Each wave is an indigo ripple on slate
which advances, glissando, a wraith from a wall
of nothingness, makes the expanse undulate
like the wandering remnant of some perfect squall,
then swells to a ledge
which is stropped to an edge
by the whet of the wind, and collapses to sledge
up the foreshore with all
of its freight.

In frothing white crescents they scallop the strand
with dazzling magnesium fire in the haar
and flare through the sea-fog until they have fanned
themselves out, then they ebb away leaving no scar
as the veils of gray clear
and the capes reappear
and, a ghost in the background, the form of a deer
manifests on the far
doeskin sand.