from “Flying Point”
The sea
calls to witness
some vastness
or that which
is only a declaration
of the limited
and the countable.
And the sun some tourist
wades out each morning
in obligation
to touch
for a few moments
and to forget and drown.
And then later the moon
high as a pill
does its own work
emitting no light but re-guiding
light emitted by another:
six ships in the hour
follow each other
far off
into some great
length of silence.
Copyright © 2015 by DJ Dolack. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 6, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Flying Point’ is a long poem in progress comprised of many short meditations. The full piece, which arranges and moves through these as seasons, grounds itself in the cadence of the natural world and its ambivalence to human kind. The poem is also perhaps an attempt to dissociate from daily life in the city, where we are constantly asked of, pleaded with, and demanded to.”
—DJ Dolack
DJ Dolack
DJ Dolack is the author of Whittling a New Face in the Dark (Black Ocean Press, 2013). He coordinates tutorial programs and teaches writing at Baruch College, and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.