Brook Emery

It appears we are machines

It appears we are machines to manufacture words,
each weighted with deliberation or floating crosswise
on currents of uncertainty. Seabirds swoop,
plunge through an interlocking edge, come away
with wriggling fish between their beaks or nothing,
either way a penetration of that collusion,
surface-glued-to-surface, which signals difference,
one side, the lean, light-strutted transparency of flight,
the other a grayscale, ever-deepening dark. At best
a hard-won buoyancy. Lie back, you say, trust
the density of matter, the way the sun can warm
even as the sea enfolds you in a cool embrace:
displacement, though it almost feels like home.
When words leave air and water rush to fill the space.