dam elegy by erasure

cole pragides

The cloudburst begins in swatches,
a kind of faltering gauze patched above
on the Hudson Highlands. The spillway
staunch in front of me, another severed limb
of tree collapsing over the edge. An arm
buoyant almost as rapture, cloistered
in the roiling turbulence of the low-head
fabrication. As if the stream possessed
by such human modifications had taught itself
to hold onto the unwilling harvests of life,
conflated debris with diaphanous foam
around its toe, and built a congregation
the way cement is poured into form:
with wood and an agent for release.
The time of concentration converging
rapidly, the flotsam in the backwash
now jostles, holding onto each other
for dear life, their downstream journey
approaching like hidden crocuses. In June,
I black out words from your last goodbye:
I’m in psychosis                                   so clean
                if you stopped me                         on my hands
            it ruined me                             and you         never                             again