Phantom (poem)
Phantom
Here the river loses its bottle-glass translucence
Before the shallows are disturbed
Crook-legged insects skim like kites and
chittering birds
Paired in low flight dip and vault
Wheeling from sight above the bankside’s
wrinkled tension
Water flows
And parts, billowing mud with each thrust
of the salvage man’s pole
Farther out, light glances from the driving current
His raft taken by the river
He lies flat
Among oyster shells cracked in two, stinking
in the drying sun
The heart severed at the hinge
He has seen the upright dead cowed by this long wait
Their peeling skin and buoyant hair more animate
than the smile frozen in gaping acquiescence
and the eyeless sockets
The executioner will have his lock
A woman passenger fainted on the wharf
Mantling on the water’s face she had seen
a phantom
But they carried her aboard
The earth is mined, shards burst from rock
to pierce the lung
Deformed into mockery all living things melt
into earth again
Two rings, two stains on paper merge to form a heart
While We Talk
(2015, Stephanie Foster)