Poetry Archives

Beneath any common belief
lies the unspoken, occluded, torn
way we proceed. (On the beach
we were washed clean by transverse
waves.)  All day long, on these
two lanes, gulls let clams and other
mollusks drop from their beaks—
the animals, raw, inside—
(At first, black sinew held fast
the hinge on each shattered,
calcareous shell.)  Then we
were driving between dunes
(riding time) on a glacier-carved
landscape—out to Race Point—
much as a word travels through
the sensorial inner ear to the cranial
space.  Now satellites transmit
the originating explosion, traced
in the fossil radiation, an echo
of singularity carried on rip-tides
of electromagnetic waves—
carrying forth the broken symmetry—
And no rain in weeks.
A chalky road illuminates
a place.