Skandalon: Poems

Second Nature

39 Second Nature After the storm, a field of detritus chokes the bend in the river—tires from a junkyard, A refrigerator door, limbs of deconstructed hardwoods. Turtles sun on the rusted flanks of oil drums. A woman stands on a railed path above, her dog on a leash ambassadorial above the wreckage, nose quivering At smells gathered from alien places, distances, the deaths of nameless creatures compounded With gypsum and spores into an irresistible perfume which the human can only obliquely comprehend, And therefore must be guarded fiercely, must be watched. ...