Wading to Pelican Island

by Lizzy Ke Polishan

over a tangled ruin of rubber, I bend to tie her shoes.
               we wade through standing water, the sky a hanging garden

               about to open and water itself. a snake confusing
a path around a rock / a kingfisher dead on the faraway shore.

she hitches up her skirt over dark jelly, and a galaxy
               of tadpoles swirls toward damp light. when the wind flickers,

               when all the elements are magnified, I want to leave,
but she keeps going out, toward the body

of the bird she wants to bury, a ribbon of seaweed clinging
               like a discarded letter to her calf. my ruined shoes / and

something forgotten in my pocket—an orange softened in time. I rotate
               the globe of its ripe weight. when I look up,

               she is far away, half her body lost underwater. her voice
is a ghost, whistling with wind over patchy rocks.

I need her to stop. I need a rowboat. I need something sacred
               with a rope. but she keeps getting farther away

               until her head is something I can pinch between two fingers,
and I am losing my ability to stand, or see, or hear

anything but the pound of water on water, the roar of wind against wind.

::

Lizzy Ke Polishan is the author of the poetry collection A Little Book of Blooms (2020) and the recipient of the Eleanor B North Poetry Award (2017). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rhino, PRISM International, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.

Image: Stephen Pedersen

Image description: white birds gathered on gray water.