Eric Pankey
—
Descent into Limbo
Gray is permeable,
Absorbs shadow and shade
With equal ease:
the gray
Of anvil dust, the shivery gray
Of graphite, gray
The density of clay,
Rain and greasy soot
To make a gray ink,
Infinite gradations,
A leaden spectrum,
Untinged by, purged of,
Color:
The gray quarry pond
Out of which
A bloated body is lifted.
Wrecked
Inasmuch as sleep descends, tomorrow’s
Iteration of fog will lift from the surface.
If one dreams one dreams of water—
Of a river that winds in wide arcs across a dark floodplain;
Of rare Venetian honey from flowers periodically submerged in lagoon tides.
Adrift, without the knowledge of the depth beneath,
One perceives the stayed tension of a storm far off in the distance;
But no clear border, endpoint, or landfall.
A bit of blue borrowed from Piero della Francesca flashes,
But little else reaches the surface.
The dinghy is the width of a stretcher, the width of a grave—each a bed of sorts.
Eric Pankey has three books forthcoming in 2019: Owl of Minerva, a collection of poems; Alias, a collection of prose poems and Vestiges, a collection of essays. He teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at George Mason University.
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