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Mario Petrucci

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Atlantis

I walk a lawn static
with January's whitecaps.
Somewhere my heel clinks
a half-submerged jar – one
of yours – its smudged label
in your hand: July '97

Gooseberry and Quince.
I tip an intricate city
on grass. Spires of quartz,
gangways, ladders dropped
by our cooling universe
into intimate depths –

a space where ice
urged itself into water.
Even where solid and liquid
contest, something beautiful
can happen, can be repeated
in drains and gutters everywhere

in tanks and pipes in spite
of being forced to light
only when the freezing's over,
the damage done. No city this,
but voodoo ribs and spines
welded behind green glass

retreating from my fingertip.
In weak sunlight they dissolve.
Someday it will burst in on me
right there in some secret place.
The wild thaw, the shock
of water.

Page(s) 46

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