ALYSSA JEWELL

CLEFT

Sometimes this place gets kind of empty,
though I am in love with the rocks again–

for the way they cast a line east of wondering
up the driveway, will the June-heavy poppies

in place and hold them against their hulk.
I am in love with the boulders too, at the bottom

of the lake, how their certain shapes always show
then shift each time some teenagers jack-knife

off the pier and out into cold white plunge,
the bewilderment of it all,

then the return

to stillness, the tangled drifts of algae
cut loose, ascending, clinging

to plastic straws and bloated alewives
glinting in a perfect graveyard

that could never hold its form for the morning.