Two Poems

James McCorkle

Allotropes

Over shimmered flats, ray and tarpon,
shimmering all silver
light, titanium white

at the window, you remember
rowing out, past pilings

the sharp line of blue against the shallows
the soft color of horizons

aquamarines filtered the air that
still held promise,
sediments, white sands
reflect  

the light streams across
the bay, molten  
air, possibilities concluding
and commencing
in collapse’s rush, 

the undoing beyond us,
the bay at noon in August
all heat shimmers
minor disturbances
mullet rising, jacks  

strike from below, shadow fish
roll up at the dark forms
overhead, schooling

recombinant
forms, each point  
imaginary, the movement
from one state to another always
verging, you would
say, the window  
open to the bay

as spun forms of dust
radiant, radioactive
traces spiral two miles
up and mix with sand

blown from the Gobi or Aral Sea, memories
of Enewetak’s tear, into

the air’s rip
and flow
likeness from likeness
cleaving—

the two jays in the lime tree
blue and black and slashes  
of white
the summer air rolls over us

commemorative and calling
heat up, building cumulus
each day, spiraling
the drafts up

pelican, osprey ridden

and we having lived so close to it
that fusion, poised, ready to be released
a point where the cascades
would begin, one  
point among many, themselves

targets, making us
part of it, the cumulus  
the carrying over, beyond,
and raining down
ashen, even in August.

Thule

so far
there
we thought you

would never return
would the ice
sing there

past boreal
after the setting off
the long arc

of the pelagic
calling
and calling back

would ice sheet
seas
and sea tracks

mute in
north barrows
the light

of what is
out of reach but
arrives or may

in some vessel
make a long arc
coming from

the rushes
rivers further silent
than their silver

scaled
windings
unknotted at the end

and then you were
not there
but far as something else

would be coming from there
willed, or willing
back

calling
though who would be listening
to it cross slate

sea and boreal
fir
coming as

a ship in wrack
ice sheathed a votive
vessel carrying

no light
its souls up-flown
the gulls white and gray