Shadow for Sunday, Nocturna for Real Toads

Richard Schear photo, Cinque Terre, Italy, 2013

is this single shadow all by itself
on the pink of the larger rock below?
no, other shadows lurk, up on cliff shelf.
centuries of water eroded walls
into safety of caves where seabirds know
they can build their nests with less chance of falls
by newly-hatched young who, blundering blind,
into wild waves and the undertow,
erase years of reproducing their kind.

Posted for Shadow Shot Sunday
and for Grace's challenge at the
Imaginary Garden with Real Toads,
where she asks us to write a poem called a "Nocturna"
with nine 10-syllable lines and a rhyme pattern of a b a, c b c, d b d.