For RWM
Dense black,
a tunnel of oaks and bats, the dark bears
down, its billows
recasting my skull: then
the meadow, open sky-yet starless, and the dark
folds, tucks,
and takes me away. A low cloud crackles
the electric wire. Frogs creak in the cattails
and sedge, rattling
the apex. Only
in spring can one see the frogs: pressed flat
on the pavement, translucent
as paper lanterns. This:
Rhode Island, tucked under the arm
of Massachusetts, the firm-
ament loosening:
limestone ellipses laced with eel grass,
panic grass, yearly less
tangible. This lane
threads two brackish ponds; they open twice
each year to the egress
of the ocean, permitting the boundless
but in measured intervals.
Some animal ruffles
the margin. A mile
further and the waves swell, the waves a rickrack
to bind each wrinkled
inch of the shore, the waves
a serrated blade to fray the shore. A single streetlamp
spoons a limpid
wedge of moths
from the black and throbs its halo into my head,
blinding me for a minute:
but I know: a hundred feet
and a snag of beach plums, rugosa roses, a reel
of cordgrass pours
for the ocean. I keep walking.
My body drifts apart, weightless,
my head full of rushes
and shale, my own two
brackish ponds in their orbits
in my skull, bitter
and open. Tonight, no moon,
and each wave a gray thumb rubbing, rubbing,
as if to erase each
recognizable gleam. But here’s
my rock. By day a rise
of red granitic gneiss
the size of a sleeping cow,
tonight it joins obscurity’s chorus: retreating blue-black
amid the plucked-
away planes of water
and air. This, my rock, my ark, my raveling
foothold; the ocean envelops
and casts it away,
repeatedly. I always stand on this rock to scan
the ocean (or now, just to listen).
Tonight the tide’s high,
and a plover still calls – day too cluttered
with the sonic glitter
of visible birds-its keep-
keep always solo
and ringing the dark like a chisel.
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