Long Poems About Rita Dove

Water keeps its horrors
while sky proclaims his,
hangs them in stars.'

              - Rita Dove


An old man who owns this place,
thinks he does, looks out from here
as I approach in reunion.
He appears not to remember me,
remember us -- my hand dwarfed by his;
sweating into his great husk
shelled of all proliferation
among the shore debris.

                  *

Among the shore debris
a morbidity of tides is dumped
in a final throe --
a last soprano tremble
that reaches for...