Poem for Dominique Lowell

DOMINIQUE IN A RINCON

Thunders across the sky but did not rain

down the stretch of that drought month.

Empty river, no water flows but a scroll

unravels and a whisper: before the law

a woman held man from his violence.

The duke devoured by insects, without

witness. Dry thunder through cloud-works.

Sun beam grips what once in riverbed slept.

Airlines crossing skyways cast shadows

over all the world wide surface.

Laws to this earth came unable to keep

man from his violence;

the duke alone

regretting the loss of what he thought

a sublime fertility, leaving man to his play,

retired to mountain top where,

even in backward times, water begins.

He loved only to mingle thoughts in river

mouths, planted august bulbs beneath

December's stones. Still no rain spoke.

All naked as art would have him dress,

fist to the sun he spoke, "blasted elements,

in you I find no coincidence."

Lightning strike creases sky, flat again,

a woman reclines in bend of river,

a nude, and artless, on barnacle shells.

At her feet ship passes and blood flows

from it. Timidly she turns stones over,

escapes a crab sidelong from exposure

and she laughs! Just where she lies

cannot be traced nor mapped. Before the law

I swear a woman sent man to his warcraft.

-- Alexander Laurence