The Pursuit
Nowhere near any feature not white,
but after weeks on the sea I’ve a read on it,
rhino-eyeing these blips we’ve picked up
as they switch between blues on the monitor.
With light of this order I’m sure my love’s diary
would have me descended on by all manner of angel
and any beasts there resigned to a thicketed plot.
But in the monster’s mind won’t I always be the thread
that will reason with its body, spurring it onto that movie set—
lantern-headed, solitary, where the serfs with their fists full of stout
hatch a stunt and a slur for every one of its sins?
Outside, the ice is elegizing itself yet again
while it ferries dark shapes between worlds.
In the stillness, we log razorbills as red diamonded, blurred,
and the murres as mere fractals, when not being fog.
Will we ever see our own breath restored for eternity?
For as long as this world would allow us
we once had rigged shadow to shadow
but now nothing will pass here for night again.
And so it would seem that neither one of us sleeps.
Unless you count the times when I’ve squinted
long enough to return us both back from the dead.
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About the Author
Mark DeCarteret is Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His Postcard Project encourages poets to correspond and collaborate with artists.
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