ADELINE CARRIE KOSCHER

Flotsam

Sea lavender
laced with debris,
like tree tops after a tornado,
after a tsunami,
we walk to the edge
of devastation,
sit in a moment of sun –
the moon is hauling in her nets,
while adolescent seagulls
throw a beach party
then wing away
over dying pitch pines
that grow too fast –
cannot survive disease –
over black locusts
hurricanes uproot – still,
saplings grow through
the toppled dead.
One kayak
paddles to and fro
over the sideways walkers,  
burrowing in the soft bed,
rippled by the ebb tide.
A man walks on water
to the horizon.

I wonder if we are the
seagulls and the crabs
knowing when to burrow, when to fly,
or the locusts and the pitch pines.
Maybe the sea lavender –
flotsam in our hair, caught in our branches –
or the flotsam.

Today, we are
the sun walking across the horizon
and the moon hauling in her nets.

The Ludlow Mills

Red brick uniformity,
green, wooden crossbars,
white eyelids, unblinking,
open to windows,
three by three by three 
by three by infinity
on the clocktower.
The squares are squared,
and time stands still 
against the backdrop: 
a slowly moving cloud.
Time stands still,
in brick and mortar.

Spire of industry aspires 
heavenward, earthbound, hellbent,
breaking the backs 
of the past.
Time stands still,
frozen in the eighteen degrees
of this January morning
in Massachusetts.
A wall of windows 
along an icy river, still,
extends beyond today's view.

Land of opportunity
exploiting hope.
Aspirations long to be free
from the bonds of poverty;
the new oppressor
offers an inviting promise –
a hidden prison –
behind the one-way 
mirrorglass of the windows,
three by three by three
by three, reflecting eternity –
one sunlit cloud 
glides across the blue.

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