The Ruin
Cleopatra Mathis
When I was young, it was enough
to save myself. Childhood’s house gave way
to the birds of the night, the rich
Louisiana dark which in its green
carries melody and chorus.
I set my own clock to it, rising
to rain in leaves, a voice
that told me I could leave that place.
Even later, the sun reflecting the image
of water onto a bedroom ceiling
could wake me.
But when my daughter disappeared,
no beauty gave back a reason to live.
I was nothing but mother, I would blow out
the world’s candle. No, burning,
no fire with its regeneration,
not even ash, that little cold ruin.
It was then I understood
the nothingness of the sea,
the crush of waves driven across miles,
riptides and currents deepening
in a water too vast to freeze.
Thousands of feet, impenetrable:
no diver, no machine, could breathe
in the time it took to reach that bottom;
nothing could live in that black, the descending
zones that cancelled out creatures—
the tiniest slime of protoplasm, eggy scum
on the chalky mud, whatever design
managed to quiver 300 fathoms down
to the zero of the final zone.
And everything above rendered trivial
by the great salt body rocking
through the sea floor canyons and mountains.
All of it a locked tomb, and me
in my iron boat.
