Ben Evans

I want to be washed in the light
of my highest imagining. Here,
where I walk in the lake's exhalation:
lucid breath echoed with silt
and old rain that breaks against
flesh like a whisper. And I hear
the clinked hymns of the grass
carp risen to tumble the bronze
of the harbor. And I see the docked
pleasure boats knock at scarred
pilings with hulls full of failing
and fifths of dark rum. Hour  
when dune grass goes silver
and fawns thieve the mums;
when moon bellies the dew
on the chemical lawns. Under
porch lights the moths at their
kiss-and-go game. In glass dens
the screens' quasar blue flicker
of ghosts. I like my eyes on this
far-off the coal freighters ember,
where below Coho like zippers
make slits in cold depth. And
it's true, that's my name, locked
in the cell of an unsteady heart
on the trunk of the cul-de-sac
willow; my hooks hitched deep,
still rusting with clusters of
mussels on rocks in these star-
mirrored shoals. I don't know
where else to go. On this break-
wall I'd stand humming Dylan,
arcing spoons of such weight
they would spill my whole line.
I'd watch the trumpeter swans
drift out beneath Cygnus. Then
knife their necks into the shine.