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Letter from Atlantis 6 |
If we fell overboard into the margin
and someone noticed,
the ship would take half an hour to turn.
It’s hard to change course
in these rollers that scroll from centuries to days
to the infinitesimal back-and-forthing
between you and me, raked
(no space between)
into the shore-foam.
No one will know for certain where to look for us.
Perhaps the mid-Atlantic, but just as possibly
Mare Nostrum – our own sea. Either way
our waves return and break,
and since there’s always more of them
the breakage does not matter.
The rip tide in my ventricle keeps me going.
Here: I’ll put the undertow into a frame
like a prospector panning for gold
in a segment of water so tiny it looks flat
as my world used to be,
bordered by emptiness & doodled terra incognita.
There goes a piece of my heartbone, eroded to a shard.
In my veins, as many grains of salt as there are stars.
Forthcoming in the author’s collection, Island (Red Hen Press).
copyright 2006
Jeanette
Clough |
