Pool at Night By K.E. Duffin

Pool at Night 

Stars are swimming in green inland bays
as meteors score captive El Greco skies 
dreaming of whiplash doves and jays, 
of stealthy clouds; a pine shadow tries
to enter this quivering rectangle of light
while fireflies, floating and blinking in a trance,
mimic wrecker’s lanterns, luring sight
into a shoal of trees where a glance

reveals only dark beyond the chittering dark. 
As if a flooded ancient Roman ark,
drifting for centuries with luxury goods, 
beached itself in these nameless woods 
beneath the moon, a tilted champagne glass.
Whatever died in the forest watches us pass.  

K.E. Duffin’s work has appeared in Agni, Canary, The Carolina Quarterly, Clade Song, Crannóg, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Kestrel, The Moth, Raintown Review, Salamander, Scintilla, Slant, Southern Poetry Review, and other journals. King Vulture, a book of poems, was published by the University of Arkansas Press.