Poem: "Pretty Portents"

PRETTY PORTENTS

for Daniel Kasowitz

1

At night the moon glows

a dirty coin-silver wash of color

on the mile-wide surface of oil

leaking everywhere.

The sheer impenetrability

the utter dissociation of water from meanings of

potabilty

make the manmade beauty

inhuman.

2

The waves seem to lumber ashore.

Their bounce and bob is gone.

They have no appetite for destruction of galleon.

No lost fortunes of doubloons will date

from this time.

3

Back in the day

the shipwrecks were gentle cuffings

the hurricanes roared with comforting finitude

to excess of human vanity

Back in the day

the Mother outlived

her Medea moments

found Mary waiting in her

to harbor milk instead of murder

Now the Mother's migraine is permanent

and the ocean

turns sailors to stone

with its Medusa stare

of oil

4

For all their Bible reading

they still can't tell a true portent from a dud.

Now the bird-free beach air is thick with stasis.

Now the sky over Kansas

is charred with storm cloud

and truculent with wind

that crushes trailer parks like beer cans.

What's a thunderstruck Job to do

who stands no chance

of hearing the tantrum of the elements

become God-like and articulate

with disgust?

5

Charley's out on the beach tonight

with his metal detector. Used to hit pockets

of spare change that had it ringing like Las Vegas.

"The drinks are on me," he'd cry out,

"this luck has got to be shared."

His wife Emily is with him,

transferring the nickels and dimes

to a tackle box long ceased to have context

for fishing. "How long do you think

until the tar balls get here?" Charley asks.

"The weatherman says any minute now,"

Emily answers. "We've got to stay one beach

ahead of the oil," Charley declares,

"until we're driven inland

and back to minimum wage."

6

Pliny the Elder couldn't take his eyes off the lava

streaming down Pompeii's main street

in a calculable flow that killed him.

Some say he didn't feel a thing

protected by a trance of wonder.

Vesuvius is at it again

spewing oil from an underwater hole off shore

this time not even bothering

to blow off steam

not even aware of its terminator

stature as it coats all living things

in its amorphous, omnivorous path

in black amber.

So far the entombments are reserved

for fish and fowl

a vast statuary of suffocation.

But the lethal viscosity

is heading past deserted beaches

on a glacial Sherman march

that will turn every seaside town into a Pompeii

of no interest to art or science

or survival.

--David Federman, Narberth, June 6, 2010