The Dead
The process became for you
invisible, above the construct of your impressions,
planets turned and into the cracks and vistas
of who you waited to become
seeped the moist and bubbling respiration of a
myriad of hosts, a legion of airy gardeners
raking cumulus into the furrows of your dreams,
poised and patient around the fringes of that blue
and crimping sky, counting on you to rise
and tune its undulations to what seemed from giddy distance
your wild bird’s heart in a drum.
We sailed those straits for days beneath you,
tacking along the wreckage of your ribs, struck dumb
in awe and agony at all the stars demanded
from you, the roll and roil of a lifetime’s tarnish and transcendence
reduced to an atom’s palpitation, exploding from its center,
faster than the roar of space’s silence,
a cataclysmic glory that stilled the waters of the earth
to watch itself diminish into the fount of its cessation.
We exited the night gray and listless,
drifting shoreward in the rain.
James Fleet Underwood writes poems shaped by memory, place, and the natural world. Living in central Thailand, he draws on the landscapes, wildlife, and quiet rhythms of daily life while exploring loss, wonder, and the unseen currents beneath ordinary experience.
