Ernest Hilbert: Ashore

Here is the second of a series of poems from Ernest Hilbert's upcoming book: All of You on the Good Earth.

Ashore

The harpooned great white shark heaves onto sand,

Nudged by waves, red cavern of dripping teeth.

A crowd comes. Loud gulls wreathe the booming mist.

Blue flies cloud the fishy sunset, and land.

One, sated, is slapped to a smear beneath

A child’s quick hand and then flicked from his wrist.

Compass and munitions are sunk with skulls

In wrecks beneath old storms, glass angels

And hourglasses, flint of sunlight through motes,

Violence of slit sails, drowned crews, split hulls,

Quiet draw of dust, too, and all that it pulls,

The slow leak and loss of each thing that floats—

Flail and wild eye, flecked spit of crippled horse,

Crust of diamonds on the throat of a corpse.

Originally appeared in Yale Review.