Hour of Lead

When you are by the sea on an island made mostly of cement

When in the morning there are no mourning doves susurrating
        in the strangler figs

No grackles raucously settling down in palm crowns at nightfall

When a brown anole fans its red dewlap
         defending its territory of pavers

And another crawls out from under a pile of moldering
       Brazilian Beauty Leaf leaves,

A greasy black tail sprout growing from its broken stub

When a cormorant dives for young snook in the bay then comes up
        empty-beaked, trembles on a rusty culvert
                 to spread and dry its accordion wings

Where the mangrove forest is no longer a forest
       no longer an oyster grove,
               your raft no longer banked in its dense cabled roots

Because some days you feel incremental disaster in each second,
           which inflames the mind like grit in an eye

Because on these days, you are like a tongue cut from a mouth

Because on these days you know you will never be empty enough

You lie on the hot brick patio and sweat, your weighty limbs soften
        into the sinking mortar

You stare and stare at a blistering sky

When finally, having reached the very bottom,
         that place where self-absorption is flawless

There springs a wondrous moment, like a trap that has unhinged:

And you feel a slight coil of return— a slight lifting

Which you recognize as your species’ uncanny ability
        to imagine buoyancy,
               where there isn’t any,

As if this will cure one failure of the self after another.

^{Note: “Hour of Lead” is taken from the third stanza of Emily Dickinson’s poem After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372)}