Forgotten Ground Regained
Sea Change
I Throwing the Stone
The sea is a stark · Sargasso still-lifechoked with wrack · in rafts of torpor.Great skeins of eelgrass · skirt the reefsround islands slumped · in lumpen stupor.As mud-bound moon-snails · sink in their spirals,slimes slide with the tide · where it puddles the pebbles.I test one for heft. My stifled mind millswith storms and maelstroms. The sea stays still,unruffled. Not even · reflections tremble.It’s close and clammy. Before I know it,I've thrown the stone. A crash... I climb…Winds lash and the splash · has become a tsunami.
II Awaiting the Wave
Black, you broach as you · breach the horizon,fall, lunge forward, surge · long miles landward,wide killer-pod wake. You close like an omen.Head-crack on rock you · crash-land, transformto migrations of sea-birds, surf-white and fanned,to the wall of an iceberg, an imminent icefall.Thirty feet up, from lobster-claw fingersI cling to this cliff · in the pall of your power,pilloried by consequence, waiting your sentence,your cliffhanger verdict · of vapor or vengeance.
Copyright © Mary Alexandra Agner, 2005.