Seven Poems

Ode on Water

Our small company drifting on the present tense,
as if time still counts. No one lives to watch us pass,
to wave their tiny flags along cliff tops.
I loaded myself onto the ark like an animal,
like something worth saving. Is there beauty in that?
Or truth, in clear light, a handful of breath,
in my own skeleton, of which I am so fond,
my body warm as the camel who sways below deck,
his brown eye eyeing me when I come down,
to nestle in his hair, fine as a fine coat.
Sweeping the deck, memory’s frail pickings
pushed into corners, is there beauty in the drowned ones,
their lost bodies, hair, trailing the emptied cities
deep below us, roads, clearways,
traffic lights still flashing, people led by currents
...