Gray \ The Bay Between The Islands

Alan: Winter hones things to a sharp edge, or dulls them to a blur, sometimes both at once.  Adrift in a drifting landscape, we anchor ourselves with words.

Gray

Gray – the snow sees to that.

A bay and some woods linger darkly

in a space of sky, fields, blurred with snow

fallen and falling, falling and fallen.

Faint gray warmth under white, as of pale paper

or pale, thinned-out ink.

A figure stands somewhere in a space called “field,”

bootprints a doubled line of shadow filling with white.

Two shapes emerge from trees to one side.

They could be dogs running,

blurs of larger and smaller, darker and lighter gray.

Looking downslope toward water or gray mud:

bands or belts of trees leading the eye out

into indefinite gray space.

Beyond, hints of pale wooded horizons

stacked, one behind another, showing

gray filtered through gray filtered through white.

The figure stands in a space called “field”

while gray shapes detach themselves from gray woods

behind and to one side.

Someone perhaps is waiting for two dogs to join him,

or for the snow to lighten, to erase his tracks,

or is just waiting.

It is unclear when he will move.

He is gray, and small,

and he is standing very still

in a space called “now.”

Nancy: Brash ice rustles on the shores, a lace edging on a bay transformed knife sharp and steel hard.

The Bay Between The Islands

Not wine and not water,

not silver, not glass,

not a mirror of the sky,

no, this morning

the bay is shardy, slivery,

edgy, as sharp as aa,

Hawaiian lava, as disorderly

as earthquake rubble, cold fire

in the sun, splintered obsidian,

and it is processing with

cymbals and drums, brash.

Shhhhh, say the islands, old

grandmother islands,

shhhhh, say their shawls

and their dark skirts,

shu shu shhhhh.