The Paddock Review

Glaciation

 

I don’t recognize where I come from

though I’m certain nothing has changed:

 

dunes mark where some forgotten giants

dropped everything.

 

Now they’re cross-cut by US 31. Follow it

and it will take you as far as you can get from here

 

without touching water.

That’s almost Florida, by the way.

 

Glacial ghosts creak and moan over the ribcage

that lives beneath deposited hometowns.

 

Stocked with bass, my neighbor’s pond was carved

out by the persistence of ice:

 

Sisyphus moving across landscapes.

This barren crust was once blessed in indigo—

 

blue transformed as a lens,

eating the light up to the edges.

 

It lives in the lake now, hiding in the den it made,

hungry, regretful.

 

The night sky pours its velvet self out

over and over again,

 

temporarily restoring some forgotten

hues upon unrecognizable streets.

 

Even now, with nowhere to go but down.

….