Driving through the mining counties
Green River to Central City
light of dawn like water
shadows rising to the surface

Chlorine and languor and vaporous
Threads rising like the steam off soup,
This brackish whirlpool wrinkles us,

Kicking through woods and fields, I’d spooked several
and once stepped on a coachwhip among gravestones,
at least one garter curled like a bow

You were sculpted on a prow,
Time wore you away as the foam might have done,
It closed your eyes one stormy night,

Now I am flying a land
compressed below me, a realm,
I alight and descend to:
Long Island as it was in the cold

In 1027, not far from Bernburg,
eighteen peasants were seized
by a common delusion.