How a Word Untangles Itself to More

On a breakwall, the screech of a herring gull. 
             Sea rolls over stones, grey sand;
each time not the same. The water persists, 
offers itself to land, as if it crosses a border; 
it retreats, leaves a mark in a different place, 
             edge not fixed.
The littoral is named, but it is never constant;

just as the call of the gull is not the gull,
its yellow beak is not the origin of squawk.
             How a word undoes itself, 
unable to extend beyond its logic;
the way that what shifts and moves on earth 
is always other than it is at first sight;
             language entangles itself,
and in that enmeshment, collapses,

but rather than not being able to explain further, 
its fall does just the opposite;
             silence opens the way to notice
the sand, the sea, a weathered stone,  
as what they are, themselves, 
             and in situ;
the burden to understand what a stone really is

is lifted, the focus broadened 
to see the picture in its unbrokenness.