“Out of the Ninth-Month Midnight”
In
memoriam, Flight 111 (2 September 1998)
Late afternoon, wind off the land.
Mountainous
clouds backlit by sun.
The
water is quicksilver.
Systaltic
─ now and then, now and then.
The
harbour is a heart, whole
and shattered,
held together,
torn
apart by its own pulse ─
the
circle of sun, the season,
the
millennium.
Suddenly,
two quivers of light
as
though far away has epitomized.
Plovers,
a pair, semipalmated,
winter-ready,
rare
on
this bit of beach at the Point.
My
gaze caught on their bright white
airborne
bellies;
I
follow them to the shoreline.
They
become stones.
Have
they come to answer the question
I ask
of the Atlantic?
They
have come to rest in the midst
of
their imperative ─
the
space between them
is the
moment between contractions
when
eternity relaxes
and
the chambers of the world
fill
with silence.
With
my binoculars I see their dark
brown
eyes keeping watch,
the
single dark breast bands,
the
nearly all dark beaks.
So
still, so alert
they
are perfectly aware of survival’s
fragility.
They simply know
the
temperature of tomorrow.
It is
me who holds us
inside
a compass,
a
dial; but there is no circumference
except
what I need to cradle
my
desperate longing.
Time
is broken and mended
in
every breath, and the ocean
ticks
strangely in the blood...
Here,
on a September littoral,
where
late afternoon sun slants seaward,
with a
warm wind blowing off the land,
on a
long journey between now and then,
these
two together pause
because life and death will not.
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