Here Be Monsters
       

We could fall off one
Edge or another. Water

Roils and troubles as if it would

Throw itself over, and glacier
Meets sea by pushing into

Erosion's demand and response. Fissure

Could swallow a body whole
Then close on itself, sucking

Its tongue. Feel

The earth's end old maps
Elaborate with what's unknown

But fully imagined, voracious

Tooth and claw
White to the bone. Just beyond

The horizon, right over

There is the trouble
Trying to picture our progress

Straight and flat. It doesn't matter

If we finish on water
Or land, on ice or the deck of a ship

Taking flight. At the wave's top

The body hangs weightless
In its turn. It doesn't matter

As soon as we arrive at any point

We're headed out the other side,
A place beyond which

There is no beyond except

In the mind, which is
It turns out the body after all

Where we live, whole-

Hearted. Where surface will not hold
We must shatter.

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Copyright © 2013 Katharine Coles All rights reserved
from The Earth Is Not Flat
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission