Atlantis
c. 1993 by Mark Doty
I thought your illness a kind of solvent
I didn't understand what's to come
up ahead, veiled like the marsh
of mildly rippling aluminum.
is also where they're going:
toward specificity: the curve
temporary shoulder-wide rivers
of study and desire. I've seen
like heaven's linen, untouched,
too cold yet for green, too early
to be anything but promise,
marvel, triumph of all flowering, the soul
in the soul, after so much diminishment...
up, across the pond and the two-lane highway,
gone. Tomorrow's unreadable
the future's nothing
Now the tide's begun
in the day's hourglass,
and our dependable marsh reappears
that spirited the ether, lessened,
what there'll be of us? Look,
rising from the waters again:
emerging from the half-light, unforgettable,
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SOURCE: "Atlantis" is a set of six poems by Mark Doty; it's the heart of his 1994 collection Atlantis. Three of the six are dream-centered. The World Dream Bank normally excludes nondream poems, but these are so powerful and compassionate I've made an exception and posted all six: 1 Faith - 2 Reprieve - 3 Michael's Dream - 4 Atlantis - 5 Coastal - 6 New Dog
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