Ilulissat

By Lesley Harrison

                          Outside

                                                outside myself  

                                                                                  there is a world,

                          he rumbled, subject to my incursions

                                          —William Carlos Williams, Paterson

i. 
impossible. 

sterile extrusion
the rigour of its beauty

its crumpled geometry
worked to defeat.

light, stopped.

locked in its form
shuttered and windless

in dry rifts,
split, furrowed, mottled, creased.


ii. 
trundling
bulging from behind, 
its too heavy body
its natural carapace

shelving green,
sinking the sea beneath it

the difficulty piling up,
rising to the surface. 


iii. 
swirling backward
on blue flowering currents

rolling up
sudden, in spray and mist

—like the turning of a page
that leaves us blinded for a second—

unlocked in a milky scum
half hid, long on its axis

growing open wounds
of violet, emerald, silver.

a point of astonishment.
lapses of silence. air.

Copyright Credit:
Lesley Harrison, "Ilulissat" from Blue Pearl. Copyright © 2017 by Lesley Harrison.  Reprinted by permission of Lesley Harrison.