Driftwood: At Durand Beach, Lake Ontario
By Tony Leuzzi
It limps the reeking water, then collapses
in lavish wreckage on the brown-lipped shore.
Each morning someone pulls it from the banks
and stacks for fire once a week. But this doesn't
stop the flow -- of shard, of edge, of brilliant damage
pouring in -- that blocks one's entry or return.
Where it comes from is a guess, but surely
sundered from some whole, like a body or belief.
There were those who killed for it, who carved
strange poems in bleached ash: Praise what makes you
mad. For wisdom offer up your eye. And hang
until the secret comes.
They prayed the bruise that brought them wood.
The lice that crawled though every pore.
The brine-caked thing of scum and green.
What might they have said if they had seen
today three children, pink with sun, run
from water, screaming as it followed them?