Roanoke Island
Their secrecy is housed here in full sight,
memorized, and gutted and more unknown.
The angels drag their wings into nettles
where the lost ones wrinkle away the earth.
Some red birds whistle into a dark red face
with no songs. The hedges burn through,
and the front windows shine with pale flowers
mirrored from lightning. A small, thick voice
wrestles the ground like a colonist’s mumbles.
And everyone in the settlement is fortified
while dying. An infant’s fingers twine out
across the elms. A stranger’s canoe is sealed
into the horizon like a giant snowflake
scuffed to heaven. Someone has poured honey
into the sand. A frozen bee has flown from her hair,
and breezed towards a wooden cloud. It is a blind boat.
It has been anchored on a whale’s spine on a dune.
Mercy has clicked its magic shoes into moonlight.
No one listens to the last one who found their rescue.
It is knotted among the clam middens with God.
Clyde Kessler has had poems published online in 2008 in Barnwood, Sugar Mule & Xelas Magazine. He volunteers with a recovery effort for the Regal Fritillary, a rare butterfly in Virginia which has been nearly extirpated. He lives in Radford VA with his wife Kendall an artist and their son Alan. (ckessler@vt.edu)