You are here,
where the sun has sunk
below the beginning
or the end of the world, and it is easy to see
how the sun once seemed
so sharply defined,
the horizon looming as a level plane—
and a vessel, laden with goods
or stores of grief,
ran the risk of falling off
the precipitous face
of that old world.
But no, now we know
that the light, dearly departed,
is gathering somewhere in
the western sky, shivering
through the gill slits
of the vertebrate fishes,
radiating in waves across the laconic sea.
There are questions to be asked,
but only here—beyond the instruments
of measurement—where you fade
into the foreground, without foreknowing,
and distance is everything you are.
The world lies a flat projection,
or spins, as though anchored. What, then,
is the true shape of the world?
Perhaps, as it did for Columbus,
standing at the mouth of the first river
of paradise, the world opened not round,
but in the languid shape of a pear.
Skin the color of frost.
The watery ache at the inoperable heart of the sea.
Terrestrial.
Unearthly.
