The Summer of Reconciliation by D. Nurkse

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 15, 2014   The Summer of Reconciliation   D. Nurkse

1 They’re happy but don’t know it. They think they’re bored and hate each other. The other has forgotten the hammer and must pound each triangular tent peg with a damp stone that has a smooth underside but no flat plane, and here the earth is granite or friable lichen. The whoosh could be a horsefly, rain, or a powerboat. They make love, and each gasps politely, each feels that fat cloud is me, that drilled acorn was me, but this person holding me is strange, withholding as time itself. 2 At sunset the island lights up:     a firefly, a Coleman lamp, a bed of coals.                                                        It’s there they will learn to be travelers, there where the flies know they are loud, the hidden spring is aware of being cold. They will get there by the teak rowboat, worn almost to a thought, the gunwale splaying, the strake shipping bilge and drowned lunar moths, the old dog in the prow, watching through cataracts.        Beach with me on mica, in the tannin-dark inlet. 3 No, there is nothing here, a wisp of tarred rope, a smashed teal egg, paths that lead to each other, so you might walk to Quarry Cove and find only quartz. But here the night makes its own darkness. Like lake water, or the spine of a moss-green book, our marriage closes over us.              Copyright © 2014 by D. Nurkse. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This poem might be about seeing yourself from a distance, then imagining yourself in the future, then actually entering your own life.” —D. Nurkse   D. Nurkse’s most recent collection of poems is A Night in Brooklyn (Knopf, 2012). He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Most Recent Book by Nurkse   A Night in Brooklyn (Knopf, 2012) "Days of Me" by Stuart Dischell "Intimacy" by Paisley Rekdal "Red Bank" by Lesle Lewis Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038