Perched like a stork spreading its wings,
the lithe young man with the baseball cap
performs his supple Tai Chi movements
as if unfurling an elongated map.
Some gremlin has just killed the lights
of this the sunniest of summers,
clouding over the seaside landscape
with a collage of threatening colors.
But stork man doesn’t appear to care,
publicly shedding his anxiety
on a grass ridge across the inlet
from the flare of the oil refinery.
He’s telling us what other movers
and forward thinkers have all along:
The soft and flexible will always
get to conquer the hard and strong.