Ferry Boat Wreck

I have spent all day with the silver disc of the barn owl's face
embedded in my thoughts & my beloved under general
anesthetic, his whole form etherized, calcite laddering
his spine, strange thorns in the distinct cave of him. I wring
my hands, silly spinster-ish fret motion, I say shoo but still
the owl's trembly face luminescent or opalescent & by all  reckoning
grave. I have never been to Long Island Sound nor any other place
where boats reduce to timber, though I have touched
both coasts & so covet fog, more amorphous
than the owl's mercurial pallor & wholly without envy of form,
disc, moon, coin, bowl, ladle, saucer, lid, or the body's
warm terra firma containered so that it can lie on top of you,
for instance, or move about the kitchen opening packages
of flour or Irish tea. Ferries have no business tossed, slammed
like bracken, matchsticked & rendered back to bones of wood
in green-gray, in blue, in splinter, silver, splayed hull, thorn.




From Rowing Through Fog selected by Carl Phillips for the PSA National Chapbook Fellowship competition. All rights Reserved.