Sati Mookherjee

King Tide

The break pawed at until it broke, 
then the island swiftly colonized
by rivers never seen before.

I found exuberance 
in how the currents coursed, 
ferocious and immigrant: 

Unretractable, anti-tide, reshaping Is-
-land, and Is. The scarp lay 
fallen in slurry and swarf. Isthmus 

already over-steep, 
uncertain bridge 
between the sprawl and bulge

of two certain worlds. 
I walked the shore of pin-striped 
shale, grey as bolts of trouser cloth.

Madronas, improbably aloft
grounded in memory
of duff and till 

upright by the oblique will 
of what embedded part pulled to Was, 
that remnant bluff. Ornate

as Old World chandeliers, dangling 
cages of root clutched the disappeared, 
burr wind scraping them barer still.

I turned to home. Leonine
ocean underfoot
growling softly at my boot. 

Native and Invasive

Sour grass and blister plant rough this prairie.
But names can betray. Nor does beauty
speak to what’s benign or to nativity. 
I’m on my knees, pulling fine-rooted sweet pea

away from death camas, willing death 
good health, space to breathe. When the air fully warms
I’ll walk this very path and hear across its breadth
and edge the pop of death’s seed pods,

death’s life opening, incubated white to black,
inserting itself among the sanicle in the meadow,
among the harsh paintbrush, the soft click clack
of death’s seeding. Today I sweep high to low

nearing the bluff, the memorial plaque bolted to rock
naming who lived here until death said stop

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