Deborah DeNicola        Margate      (Barbra Nightingale)
And After Armageddon . . .         

Everything’s waiting to open.
Especially the wings of that beached dragonfly,

the one that lit on the sand, observing the gulls, 
the effortless gliding of gulls.  Their ease and grace 

over ruined dunes. And those pipers, their skinny legs 
moving as if motored by batteries. I watch as they march 

with staccato footsteps, stalking midges and mayflies 
in chinks of light, thrilled— just to have survived. 

I wait for the ocean to open its benthic rise, 
broken sediment, the sea that levels this twilight. 

The gulls pull on the capes of their wings, 
they know what liberates the four-chambered

heart and opens its ventricles. What small deliverance 
we had is now exposed like a castle’s casement, 

an old oak door we stepped through at the edge 
of the moat— Can’t we rejoice as the clouds 

open their raiment and radiant salmon colors 
the sky, calls us to worship the sun--

despite the gift of night coming on? 
Notice the brilliance of stars fastened

to the horizon. When will we stop 
interrogating our souls, instead throw them wide, 

allow them to leave our bones behind to stencil the sand, 
taking only the shadows of our appendages— 

allowing this world to dissolve 
at the threshold of infinite others?

Originally published in Vox Populi June 27, 2022 1 day only online