The Adriatic Sea
       

A bell-shrouded town; town around a steeple, strafed
    with doleful sunlight; a jellyfish

Looming at the tide; a string of widows climbing the
    hill; the hem of their weeds and the

Gold dust daubed there; the breast of each town;
    tessellating dusky roof town; the raucous

Game of the sea-birds; fall asleep town; gray light at
    dawn; son slipping into the church; a

Quarrel of boats limned with salt, their hulls touching
    and pulling apart; north wind and

South wind town; the alley becoming a window; bells
    go; a tower sparrow dives everywhere;

The cacti with not a needle; town-of-the-oldest-pines;
    bullet hole town; the flat rock for

Inscription from the sea; olives that fatten even in the
    winter; I looked into one and it gazed

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Copyright © 2011 Zachary Harris All rights reserved
from There Is Another Poem, in Which The News Is Erased and Rewritten
New Michigan Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission