The fish drain down the channels of the sea
like silver clots in innumerable veins,
down to the dark wells and cataracts
that open endlessly, like mourning mouths,
slight bellies doused
for a moment with sun, then gone,
as a bird-flock cleaves in two at sight of a hawk
and rejoins, a black mass like a grain-sack,
ripening under the hissing husks of wings.
Swift patterns that collect and die
seething with light.
Beside the cormorants drying
their wings at the riverbed
dusk carries me in like a paper fan.
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It's interesting, but, for the effort that you put into the alliterations throughout the first two stanzas, I actually think that the more sonically striking moment—or at least the one that seems the most effortless, is the assonance in the first line of the third ("Beside... drying").
ReplyDeleteClever moment in the second line with the mention of "clots" followed by a sonic stutter or "clot" of sorts: "clots in inn—"
I also like the first two lines of the second and the plays, both internal and final (would you call them "rhymes"? Fractional rhymes, maybe...) on the /k/ sound: "flock - hawk / black - sack"—and also how you manage to pull off the latter pair in the same line without having them sound hokey. Same for "sun, then gone." I always wanted to be able to execute these internal patterns so well.
Do you have cormorants in New Jersey? I think, in Michigan, we're too far north, and they're salt-water birds, aren't they?