Scott Bentley

A Magnitude

—for those lost in the Sendai disasters
and to their families worldwide

Under white water, intractable sand
surrounding silence made wide plains muck. For, if

and should the gods allow
trees, wooden hulls
the ground sounds.

Maintain perspective in retrospect instrument. The sky
cloudless, shook with clods clogged and dogged by daylight

dragging shadows by the loss, forever
scramble the banks or sunk. The story goes

in the aftermath flash: Infiltrate the margins. Fire power
spun planet, diminish the tilt
a ripple finish. Helicopter showers

            motor rotors, piston riots.                                At temple while supplies last
positions the cascading                                   Tectonic along a fault-line, plates
in glass destruction particle plants mis-
                                                            function from land one hand, fell

Poseidon’s trident

in an instant shifted gears, aground.
These many messy tongues, spoken SPHERES,
tell all...

Mudlark, early morning warning
response time
news cycles catastrophic failures

the dawn set rites at true north
in-house address, check.

Gone, broken
keels, dry land mouth-to-mouth: dwindling yield. Pictures

rock, fragments a tidal shield. Thrown townships
disappeared, delivery bottleneck supplies. Drowned ships
islands, atoll

pools, a rolling cliff. Far-off a broken colonnade
perhaps the sun overtook with orthodox dioxide.

Remains in seconds strewn, reaches
a wave of memory at bay on the beaches that history teaches

error dwells a gavel strikes. Seeming blind
or worse, trapped unseen from behind. From time-to-time

sidearms discharge

country circuit ,

in the eyes shock and awe, fear in the faces fracturejoint, feces
ashen, grave

the continental shelf, axis traces
off kilter.

Beyond nowhere
raw air

disbelief, floods

in defiance join up. Circumference, fled
uprising, out back that shed.

(03.13.11)