As if the lucky might ride it to shore
while the others go under.
Some dogs make for higher ground,
spurred by a shake or a sound
in a frequency to which we never tuned.
Dogs’ ears rise now
to the scream of the still-black screen,
the pitch before the picture.
Breaking here means broken elsewhere.
All our instruments, and still we’re late.
It’s six o’clock. In the windows,
families flicker on,
faces splashed blue in the wake.
From Shore Ordered Ocean. Copyright © 2009 by Dora Malech. Reprinted by permission of the author and The Waywiser Press.