Bitumen
we sink piles into the tidal mud,
taking care not to stand still
for long, pushing past twilight,
stopping at frozen.
stiffening fingers pulling salt marsh grass
from bootlaces. a notch cut
last october flush with acorn barnacles.
tools oiled, wrapped, and stowed.
trading visible breaths
for steam-fogged windows,
a pot of three sisters on the stove,
the same wooden spoon since pitch lake—
two stirs and a tap.
spread across the kitchen table, an array
of paint samples to match speckled eggs.
the front door frames the darkened shore,
two hundred yards away.
terns hop between new timbers,
fossil-rib silhouettes.
kohoutek fading above us,
tail spiking sunward, just after michaelmas.
in the gap where sea becomes river,
paper birches spent the night
showing card tricks to the quaking aspens—
dry applause.
hulls tarred at the speed of oxen,
bitumen smothering gaps in the basket,
carrying beyond water’s edge.
here we hold,
waves crawling onto the beach
on elbows and knees.
© Cole Roulain
Cole Roulain lives and writes in Vermont and is a citizen of the Comanche Nation. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Northern Spy.
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