Apollo
So tremble under the battery
Of a so much blunt mechanic; it struck
The surface a retreating steam—
Extracting from this lake its very lake.
The flecked, molten,
Silhouetting—all this brief statuary,
Katydids and oak which obey and fall and must:
We cadge the shore, we toss stones into the waves,
Our lips begin to dry so no shade turns us back.
Something pulls a flicking heat in track:
A set of rings heave down from rich fingers,
A set of rings scatters across the branching tanagers.
D. Eric Parkison received his MFA from Boston University. His chapbook, No Arcadia, came out in 2020. In the spring of 2022, he received a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.