AQUATELOS A Thesis Presented to the Faculty ... - Cornell University

3. UNDERTOW
Ash relax, night runs aquatic
Saturated with thoughts of leaves
Currents connect, trace summer pedigrees
While cicadas drowse, rasp off last sun
Raccoons squirm from dumpsters like a birth and run
For vanishing gaps between the fence’s filigree
And the black where earth’s ocean heaves
A spider sighs, packs up his web, fatally romantic
Cycles reconfigure, turn and moil
Tucked young shiver, moan a little
A lithograph moon flakes its brittle
Message on the dead, and the living who still float
Insensate to what’s passing, like the fish who could not gloat
When first it sank a stocky fin in soil
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