Aqua Corpus | John Muro

Air’s frosted and silvered by salt and the winter

Sky’s so impossibly blue one could be forgiven

For thinking all that was once known has

Been forgotten and these mottled branches

Of sycamore have been transformed into

Gnarled colonies of coral, and clusters of

Ornamental grass are anemones adorning some

Desolate seabed; nearby husks of hydrangeas

And winterberry may as well be sponges nudged

Towards a waterline by some wayward current

While low clouds gather like schools of guileless

Tangs and damsel fish to survey the dim chrome

Spatter of a green-house – a caravel somehow

Battered and brushed ashore – the expanse

Of sail lifting feebly like a wing that’s torn

Or tearing in a tangle of wind, though we,

Too, are wind-tossed and in bitter need

Of ballast – disoriented castaways stranded

Amid iridescent tides while the elements

Conspire to transform the shoreline into

Something utterly strange and not of this world.

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John’s first volume of poems, “In the Lilac Hour,” was published last year by Antrim House, and it is available on Amazon.

Art Photo Credit: Raimundo Fernandez Diez via Getty Images