Picking Up Shiny Things

after the water

There is a always a threshold for things
that alter us, a clean edge at the start,
the surprise of it like a blade pressed cold
against the throat. The first wave is forgotten

in the next. Fierce water rises like a wicked sun
to spread across the fields, the little houses,
the ponies with their bright new shoes.
Oh, the tumble and spill of cobbled hopes,

the surge of flowerpots and paperbacks!
And there my heart dissolves, in the unbound
Bay, like a snow flake swallowed by the tide,
assimilated so that I might wrap around the fallen

palms and beams, might taste the rust and ruin.
It is nothing, no solace, no redemption,
but a useless rag I use to blot the tortured landscape.
I will not ask for pardon, will not assume

it matters. Better I was a splintered pole,
something stark and astonishing, than this quiet
sadness that only laps the dirty hem of sky,
an imperceptible swell that bears no boat or seed.