These weeks wide as a wave and white
as wheels of foaming salt immerse the room
in incandescence. Light laps against my window
and seethes there, morning traffic murmurs
like an ocean: that sea of cut glass
is too shallow to swim. I’d like to wet my feet,
find it colder than expected, not too cold to bear.
The water won’t bear my weight. (The eye wades
easily
into the lavish tide, sinks there
with rusting astrolabes and compasses.) Something
about evaporation and condensation, the pane’s
vacillation
between liquid and solid; something about Canute
and the heedless rollers. Odysseus passed the famous
wrecks
without a word, bailed their corrosion from his sleep
ten years or more. The sirens did as they were told,
drowned ships poured out in a squall.
Eventually even the salt forgot. My eyes
are open. The waters close over my head.
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