by Chris Boccia
Meltwater rewrites the contours
of my
thoughts,
stalling all direction
with sheer sensation.
My skull lies at the concourse
of outflows from the ice dam.
It’s April, of course,
and the sun is cutting
circulation into ancient snows,
delving azure caves and elegant rapids.
The onrush of catastrophe is evident:
the glacial river runs to a swollen lake,
waves probe the ramparts of the ice sheet,
and calving monoliths crack the air.
For millennia, the winter
has fortified the continents’ bedsheets,
and turned oceans to archipelagos of ice floes.
But the Earth has wobbled:
drunk middle child drawing eccentric
ellipses through the dark, each backstep
binding, permanent,
a cold empire of lifeless land
and thriving seas.
Sunlight softens my footprints.
In a moment
the wall will fail.
Obeying gravity, the wide water
will find the shortest path
cleaving the fractals of the ice canyons
and dappled rivers.
The bow wave with a taste for salt
will strive eastward.
There was nothing that could have saved me
as I drenched my midwinter wounds
in the chill spring’s cleanse.
The roar will expand, dilating all perception
louder than any I could utter
in lust or larceny.
It will begin with clear, bright water
crashing through my breath.
CHRIS BOCCIA is an avid naturalist and birdwatcher who dabbles in poetry and novel writing. When he's not traveling the world in search of as many bird species as possible, Chris is working on his PhD in conservation genomics or reading swaths of speculative and classic literature.
Old shorelines can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 4.2.
