Comeback for snowy plover

Associated Press headline, Oct. 13, 2014

O, lesser flake of feathers, O downy
shore­winged picker of cockles

and mites, twig­legged runner through ripples,
who was it called you out of extinction

to flit and flirt again with the waves?
Who missed you enough to amend

your habitation? Who restored you,
winging you back to the beaches of our lives?

What urgent impulse then spirited you,
safe in your dappled egg, to break shell,

chick stirring in shallow sand­scrape,
lifting to fly the salt wind­­rising in drifts

over the wild surf, your pinions
riding the breath of God?

Luci Shaw