Empire Poem by Robert P Arthur

Empire


At nightfall
west from Crisfield through
Tangier Sound
The orange boat moves on
to the isle of Deal

Nets of snow tumble to the water dark

In the waning sun
south of the Choptank the fast land
disappears.Hummocks of pine and oak
give way to icy tumps

Captains
of bateaux and dinky skiffs
begin their prayers
Reaching the shallows
the orange boat feels its way
down trenches of tidal gut
through thoroughfare, drain
and little swash of sucking marsh

From over a shoulder, the pale moon comes
thin as a lure and shining
There, in widgeon grass and wild, wild celery,
silage from the marshlands flow,
the spiky corn grass
ripples in windrows, or lies
in cowlicks damp and sticky

My orange boat parts the Spartan flora, the sea lettuce
the eelgrass
The mud banks quake and hold its bow
And caught like fish for a moment only
we are lost in the dark netting
that circles the globe
and rules the world
There you are, the dredge boat captain laughs
And so we are

Thinking of the cypress
in the black water of the Pocomoke
of the great depth at which we find
images of ghosts and things now gone

of the osprey, white
the teal
mallard
railbird
loon and canvasback

Thinking of the islands vanished
into the Chesapeake
of Holland Island
whose schoolhouse, church and houses
broke off in chunks and drowned
Thinking of the original floating theater
Showboat, closed down
and drifting
Thinking of the dark haul of all
the wide-eyed once familiar faces
now sinking or sunken
Thinking of all the souls now settling
like ballast
into the Chesapeake
into the empire of the whistling swan