CONJUNCTIONS: A Web Exclusive
James McCorkle
Allotropes
Over shimmered flats, ray and tarpon,
shimmering all silver
light, titanium white
at the window, you remember
rowing out, past pilings
the sharp line of blue against the shallows
the soft color of horizons
aquamarines filtered the air that
still held promise,
sediments, white sands
reflect
the light streams across
the bay, molten
air, possibilities concluding
and commencing
in collapse’s rush,
the undoing beyond us,
the bay at noon in August
all heat shimmers
minor disturbances
mullet rising, jacks
strike from below, shadow fish
roll up at the dark forms
overhead, schooling
recombinant
forms, each point
imaginary, the movement
from one state to another always
verging, you would
say, the window
open to the bay
as spun forms of dust
radiant, radioactive
traces spiral two miles
up and mix with sand
blown from the Gobi or Aral Sea, memories
of Enewetak’s tear, into
the air’s rip
and flow
likeness from likeness
cleaving—
the two jays in the lime tree
blue and black and slashes
of white
the summer air rolls over us
commemorative and calling
heat up, building cumulus
each day, spiraling
the drafts up
pelican, osprey ridden
and we having lived so close to it
that fusion, poised, ready to be released
a point where the cascades
would begin, one
point among many, themselves
targets, making us
part of it, the cumulus
the carrying over, beyond,
and raining down
ashen, even in August.
Thule
so far
there
we thought you
would never return
would the ice
sing there
past boreal
after the setting off
the long arc
of the pelagic
calling
and calling back
would ice sheet
seas
and sea tracks
mute in
north barrows
the light
of what is
out of reach but
arrives or may
in some vessel
make a long arc
coming from
the rushes
rivers further silent
than their silver
scaled
windings
unknotted at the end
and then you were
not there
but far as something else
would be coming from there
willed, or willing
back
calling
though who would be listening
to it cross slate
sea and boreal
fir
coming as
a ship in wrack
ice sheathed a votive
vessel carrying
no light
its souls up-flown
the gulls white and gray
□