What has become of morning and mourning
And these uncertain whispers of stardust and blood that rouse us to rejoice in statues of light carved at the edge of the sea?
To say we are one, one form, one matter formed
From expectations and needs for all these things
Longed for in our waking sleep, in restlessness
And the hesitations of our deep sins of omission,
Is to say we cannot hold the shapes we dream.
So if you come to me dressed in skins stolen from
The traps of seeming innocence, speaking in tongues
Of things that exist only in reflection and coincidence,
Will our memories still wander beneath the Dogwoods
The way our bodies wandered under their weathered leaves?
I have so few storms inside me today, so few days left
Of thunder and winds to sweep the porch of debris
I only see the half-light of summer washing your hair.
Like you, I am a mythology, and forbidden, a glyph
Of nerve and bone carved into the scattered stone
Tablets at the island’s crumbling edge as it is eaten
By the sea. The season descending is just another form of gravity and the only anchor Autumn offers.
In the history of water surrounding us, the tidal light
Of chance and natural circumstance, if anything is real
It is this, this chemistry of form and flesh energy holds
Together tenebrously until we rearrange the changing
Syllables of days into cells and codices of a language so human
All our lost and unborn lives will be recovered from the sea.
A resident of the dank and moldy primal forests of West Tisbury for 32 years, Lee H. McCormack has been occasionally reported as actually being seen alive, usually from a great distance through high-octane vision-magnifying devices. In spite of life, he has managed to continue pursuing the elusive images and metaphors required in poetry to properly confound the rational senses on his mysterious and wondrous journey of spirit through matter towards that final passage into solar wind and pure light. Otherwise, he’s a pretty nice guy.