Stiff chill wind. Bright
sun. Birds talking,
Flying stationary into the breeze,
Then falling down and back
Into swift, wind-driven swoops.
Grey birds like watered silk
Barely there against grey mud,
Probe the depths with their cartoonish bills,
Then race along to probe again,
Writing in glyphs a song of long habit
And slow time with nearly weightless feet,
To be erased in minutes
By recuperating mud and creeping effluent.
The shoreline trail follows the seam
Where towns are stitched onto the bay,
A sliver of infirm land no longer fit for profit
Dolled up to show what we have lost.
The salt ponds lie abandoned.
A smell of rot blows off the blooming algae.
Beyond the crystal scurf and broken gear,
Whitecaps curl on dark, dishwater bay.
A span of toothpick bridge crossing the water
Barely holds the sides together,
As unsuspected space bulges up and
Pushes out a receding grey-scale skyline.
A goose hides in the concrete rubble.
And at trail’s end, Mt. Trashmore.
Our things disowned are laid to rest
In indecent burial, vast apocalyptic anticlimax,
Huge heap of nothing, stubbled, stodgy, sullen,
A coverlet of trash, stitched together and raveling at once.
Marijke Rijsberman |
