* * *
WITH MOORE & NIEDECKER ON THE NORTH SEA | SEEING
that terns & skuas
are quicker than rocks
that lichen acidifies
sandstone back
to sand
on the mossed mass
of Feadda Ness
& the boat’s
white wake un-centers
below white cloud
with pirate skuas, diving
gannets, razorbills
arrowing sea to cliff
shadow-cut & back
to ink-blue chopped
green-silver, cellar-black
one pale sea-arch
suspended w paused
where sandstone beddings
tilt & vee—cave to arch
to stack & back
to razorbills, guillemots
diving cliff-shelf
to sea, a seen surface
pierced
& parsed—
our lovely finite parentage—
& all thoughts spine
into spine
* * *
HATTERAS | LIKE ALL LINES IN THE SAND, THESE
are destined to disappear, the islands’
migratory routes as routine as
a bird’s—the sting
of certainty
on wavering path, a nudge
of wind, of wave, the will
of longshore drift
unknowable, though every force
be measured, drawn—
red arrows over photographs:
a map sketched
on a moment gone : today
the newest island reaches back
touches Hatteras just
where water rushes landward, breaks
the grip : a self more self,
a bird in air, in roil
of wind & current, shoals
& tide, sea-surface changing
twenty degrees in two miles :
the cross-bedded text
of deposition—
lyric shape of the flock
flying : dive of the gannets
stripped from the gannets
color of cormorants
never restored
*
to the cormorants—
a paleo-topography
of marks on paper
built by storms, a shape
to underlie the free
intelligence of islands
thinking their way
through currents, winds, all deeply
interested—no, I’ll fix that
deeply intended—
so relics within the work
are the work : the fossils, the shells
in shallow sound, an ear receiving
only plosives, no vowels
or only vowels
& no verbs, the stutter
of suffering
sound in the wake
of remorse : I would set my traps
on the hunted silence
scrawled at the moment
of tidal shift
the word snare catching the root
of silence : a phantom shoreline
red ink on what is now the sea
and a road pushed all the way
to the sound—I mean
The Sound, and twice I typed
the room of silence, twice went back
to fix it :
*
an island that rises because the sea
rises : each grain
tumbling another, each gannet lifted
high, and then
the sound of water, if not the water
the wingspan if not the wing—
* * *
Susan Tichy is the author of six books, most recently The Avalanche Path in Summer (poems, mountains) and Trafficke, a mixed-form investigation of family, race, and language, both from Ahsahta Press. Her work has been included in the National Poetry Series and recognized by numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. These poems are from a new project, North | Rock | Edge, written from North Atlantic islands & coastlines. Now Professor Emerita at George Mason University, she resides in Colorado.
featured photo courtesy of the author
