20180723

Age of Experience

Daniel Cowper


Following the retreating shore, we lead
our horses into valleys flat with slopped

deposits of silt and junk. Nail-toothed eels loop
in pools; huge squid ooze aimless around

the oily iridescence, skins rippling with
rainbow eyespots. While the earth drains we eat

those freaks, slice chunks off suckered arms.
The topsoil bakes with trapped compost

of choked sealife, drowned birds and beasts. Steam vines
up mountain slopes, crystallizes at night

on summits of rock. Children track our plows,
sowing the exothermic plain, kids pick

skulls from furrows instead of stones, parse bones
as beast or human. Skeletons stack neatly

into fences, white walls for huts. We wear
ourselves out working, dream ad idem

 
                                                of mushy spatter

and drip on decking.
The constant roll     of a wooden hull.

Greedy water
discs our sleep,

tossing up                                little dollops
wherever                                  raindrops fall.
 
The immense chime
of rain                      perforating the sea.

In my bunk, I listen to the hum of ants
hollowing ribs and tibia

within the walls, admire
the myriad spider webs.

Through gaps between femurs and funnels
I watch insomniacs stumble

side to side in nocturnal fields, teasing
bones from rancid mud,

mourning over drowned unknowns,
the disarticulated dead.

On the sea’s tympanum

once we found a flotilla of glass buoys,

knitted in the teal fibres of fishing nets.
Under them hung strips of over-weighted mesh,
 
snagged and tangled with dead
sharks and cormorants,
 
loose sneakers and cushions.
On one stray cord a bride

in bridal dress
was leashed head downward
 
in the water, veil
and chiffon train

beating with an inorganic pulse.

 

 

Daniel Cowper’s first book of poetry is forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press. His chapbook, The God of Doors, was published by Frog Hollow Press as co-winner of its chapbook contest. Daniel and his wife serve as the poetry editors for Pulp Literature, and live mostly in a small cabin on Bowen Island, BC.

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