Smithereens Press Chapbooks Atoll by Dylan Brennan | Page 10

Tabula Rasa

Oceanic dispersal. The potential of a heliotropic
universe encased within each capsule,
perhaps from Revillagigedo or the Galapagos,
its salt-tolerant seeds floated to this ribbon of land.
I imagine the ornithologist’s soft treading
upon luxuriant mats of goatsfoot morning-glory,
his pig extirpation programme and unprophetic
nightmare of a pregnant sow he’d left behind.
Beneath the manic trample of a million land crabs
the limbs of a pantropical creeping vine
cling to extinct polyps of coralline limestone,
internal advance halted by the brackish waters
of Clipperton’s heart. Beyond the surrounding
sedge marshes a lesser man-o-war bird inflates
its exuberant chest and flittering, perhaps, between
the pinnacles, a ruddy turnstone in post-nuptial plumage.

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