DRIFT (AN EXCERPT) Poem by Charlotte Van den Broeck

One more hour and one more and one more
no morning

some kind of gentle rain on the window
beyond it the first traffic, the rustling around me swelling
into a new space, an instant ocean
sounding like the sea on relaxation CDs: surrounding you
completely
until light empties the room

and it almost seems like survival:
wanting to give everything a territory and a time
people, intelligible physics

shear for instance
the way wind scouring the surface of the water
moves particles and later it doesn't even matter
the volume unchanged, not patterning the blue

does it matter
who grabbed what where
or who was the last left standing?

facts are always overtaken by structures, the teeth
ground to grit of a morning, the mouth emptied of pleas

and last night I did try
I tried to throw the fish on the beach back
to throw the fish on the beach back into the water and life
and again the fish back into life in the water I tried

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