Elemental                                                                                                                  

Imagine them meeting always

in the seamless vacancy

of ceaseless endings. Where the world

is subtracted to its beginning,

allowing any possibility to arise. 

They stand fast on the escarpment,

becalmed above the colliding seas.

Far enough apart to better know

and remember each other

cast in the sifting, stinging mist.

Till finally comes the wonderment.

Not constancy. But the elemental

passage of Cape Breton winters,

unholy as the land that is flung together,

unequal parts of rock and water.

The stout land beneath their feet, scored

by sheeting winds, adjourns

the knowledge between them in an instant.

Requiring nothing else to arise. Empty

as the abiding prospect of continuing sky

following its own light everywhere.

MR/Metropolitan Review  State University of New York, 2014