Trophic Cascade. Camille T. Dungy

be compared to what we had seen. Rising in the distance could have been anything. Could have been fortresses. Could have been oceans. Could have been elephants. Could have been dunes. We were caught somewhere between the compact center of the earth and the earth’s exaggerated edges. Trucks drove toward us with long fishing poles lodged in their front fenders. Trucks drove toward us looking like catfish on their way to a cove that was bound to disappoint. I thought I was close to understanding where we really were, but that ceased to be the point a long time ago. One of us passed a strip of dry, salty meat through our own lips. One of us passed a strip of dry, salty meat to the dog. We climbed out of the car inside a grayness and put up our tent in the wind. The sun set before we got the fire started. There were no stars to speak of, only fog and clouds and a long night sky, jackals packed and cackling in the distance, the road ahead of us still.

      Ultrasound

      I will wait for you as cicada wait

      through winter, their August song

      harbored in the last thunder clap

      of the season. I will wait, as I wait

      through any drought, for the lesson.

      I will wait for you as the colloquy waits

      on polyphony; wait for you as the bunting

      waits on the berry. I will wait for you,

      as I wait through all the hedgerows.

      I will wait for the clearing.

      I will wait as the tide pool waits. I will

      wait as the upturned leaf before dawn.

      The hangar for its zeppelin. The student

      for her marks. I will wait. I will wait,

      untying lace, for the double binding.

      As I wait for the green grandeur of luna moth,

      wings once apprehended then gone

      out of sight, I will wait for you. I will

      wait as your infant tongue will wait,

      unacquainted, for the first taste of cherry.

      Ars Poetica: Cove Song

      One and two and three: in time,

      white birds hum out of the choir

      of air, while we tend our dark skin

      with coconut oil, content to sing

      a welcome to the high and low tides.

      The sky song is a blues the sea

      comes into on repeated lines. Why, even

      the rocks sing, the reeds. This

      is how we learn what game to lure

      into what traps, which scales

      to seek, which to keep at bay. We’ve heard

      the mess those men have said. That

      all we do is stand around and chatter.

      It drives them mad, our simple acts

      repeated for the pure pleasure of sound.

      We’ve taught the flowers, high

      and yellow, how to modulate

      their tone. They used to come off sharp

      and off-beat, but now they blend

      right in. The men think themselves

      industrious. Sword thrusting,

      sea sailing: the purposes of their purpose

      driven lives. It makes them crazy

      to think we do nothing more than play

      the lyre, sing all day. Like a group

      of grade school boys trounced in debate,

      they plug their ears and turn away.

      Only one climbed the lookout

      to listen. Does he hear? Even

      the boulders’ jaws are wide,

      even the canoe’s mouth joins our song.

      The cloud is singing softly. Listen now,

      her voice will blend with wind, with rain.

      Nullipara

      I have learned love rests on the odd assortments of petals.

      Pick buttercup, pick sweet pea:

      You love me. You love me.

      Pick snowdrop:

      You love me not.

      What then shall I make of the four valves in your heart?

      The twin seedpods of your ovaries?

      You love me not. You cannot love.

      I dream of the digits, five on each

      of the hands I am hoping to hold.

      Your ten toes curl and uncurl through the sea

      of my unseeing.

      Ars Poetica: Field Trip