Jim Brock
Island Park: Midnight

Island Park: Midnight

Island Park is the wrong name
for this place. At Island Park,
you should be below the subtropics,

having just retired the riggings
because the wind frayed slack
and the boat is drifting. At Island

Park, you should be falling upon
each island by accident, or each one
coming to you, whole, with

ungardened aviaries. You should
be combing the evening sky, netting
all the low, close planets buoyant

upon the Atlantic, so calm
even the air becomes a warm verb:
wither, weather, wuther.

But Island Park is in Idaho,
and where beneath a December
new moon, Island Park is just

a snow field, between river and
reservoir, a convulse of lava that rose
and shivered solid. Still, with

our friends, you and I cannot believe
our luck, leaning heavy on our ski
poles, resting. Over the black

crests and falls of snow, beneath
the black crystalline clouds, only
the stars are clear, only our

shadowed bodies a sure thing.
I can tell you are looking at me.
I am not surprised to be shorn

there, to be reckoned as a moment
to such stillness, to be made
by your memory, as if all along

I had lain there in this cold Idaho,
newly risen from this male-steeped
darkness, unclaimed for so long,

until now.

Poet's Biography:

Jim Brock directs the writing program at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida, where he enjoys dance, film, and birding. He has one book to his credit, The Sunshine Mine Disaster, (University of Idaho Press) and his poems most recently appear in Caffeine Destiny, Kimera, Southern Ocean Review, Red Booth Review, and the Santa Barbara Review. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alex Haley Foundation, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Idaho Commission for the Arts.