Wright, Charles: Laguna Dantesca

I want, like a little boat, to be isolate,

                              slipping across one element

Toward the horizon, whose lips know something

  but stay sealed under the heaven of the moon.

There’s something I want to look on face to face.

Like a rock, or some other heavy thing, I want

                         to descend through clear water

Endlessly,

               disappearing as she did,

Line after leached line, into the lunar deeps.

I want, like these levander bells from the

jacaranda tres, to flare with the fixed stars,

            used up and self-satisfied.

Tree frogs drum in the dark. The small brass

           of the natural world is drumming and

                      what I want is nothing to them.

Above me, the big dog lies low in the

                      southern sky and bides its time.

Like a scrap of charred paper,

                                              I want to return.

There’s something I want to look on whose

                     face rises and falls like a flame.

I want to sit down there, the dog asleep at my feet.