This week’s poem, by Dutch Walsh, is a paean to piping plovers, whose tiny and vulnerable yet resilient young have lately been fledging all along Maine’s beaches. I love this poem’s clear reverence for these beautiful birds, its clarion images of them, and its commitment to honoring them as our neighbors — fellow beings with whom we share the shore.

Dutch Walsh is interested in the arts and all things outdoors, including life along the coast, migrating shorebirds, and the impact of sea-level rise on shorebird habitat. Walsh is a Piping Plover and Least Tern Recovery Program volunteer and Shorebird Ambassador for Maine Audubon. He lives in Cape Elizabeth.

Piping Plover

If you could touch the feathers with your fingertip,
or rub its tiny body against your cheek,
if you could, it would be the feel of satin or silk, and a smoothness
one does not expect to encounter on the sands of the beach.

Gentle and serene, legs in fast motion, it darts
in and out of the pale green beach grass,
stopping to tilt its head at a bundle of coarse brown wrack
scattered at high tide line.

Ancient seashore, waves washing onto the sand.
Dry sand along the dunes
welcomes the plover for a season,
to rest, replenish and repeat
a ritual of courtship, of creating new life.

As quietly as they arrive, they disappear.
Dry sands along the dunes are empty, lonely.
Wind blows the vegetation, there is no other movement.
They leave, leave the waves, the sand,
this place we visit, this place they rely on.

They live a life that follows a pattern,
instinctually returning each year.
A soft, but resilient neighbor to humans on the beach,
if the beach is welcoming.
We return, anxious, hoping to see them again.

How satisfying to share the ancient shore
with a creature, so unassuming, so resolute, so attentive.
Warmth, sea breeze, soft waves on the shore,
a clear plaintive call carries across the dry sand,
our eyes search the beach and we know
they have returned.

– Dutch Walsh

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Piping Plover,” copyright 2025 by Dutch Walsh, appears by permission of the author.