When the storm passed
       

the gulls ate bread from the hair of children
who built castles out of marine bone, their
parents shrieking at the birds not to be hungry,
and the shallow pits hummed a sound:
late Miocene, when the plates stretched
and what was horizontal went up and down
so islands, some of them, have their doubles
in a rift in the ocean floor, hidden wet
sediment in the name of the storm
that sent us running under rooftops
anchored above the island that is
still drying, terrified to be seen, not to
mention grown upon; while we huddled
and shivered our feet were a bruise
on the back of the part of the world
we can breathe on, where clouds
tell the fortune of weather on TV,
though the people who say the words
"rain" "wind" "sun" pretend every day
to have just learned them

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Copyright © 2022 Dennis James Sweeney All rights reserved
from Ecotone
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission