DIVING OFF FROM THE WRECKAGE

for John Keats, Percy Shelley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, Walt Whitman and Hart Crane

diving off from the wreckage

I flee all treasure

floating like a leaf on the tide of

a poem by Shelley...though his tide was the wind''s

and not doubling back 

looking for the artifacts

for the target audience.

I am unmoored

and seemingly, dreamingly drown like Shelley

on the ocean floor clutching my volume of Keats

in an ironic Age

I weep for Adonis oh weep for him for he is dead

and now the singer of his elegy too 

I mourned and yet shall yet shall mourn as Whitman said

in ever returning Spring

and yet I sink not as lead, but am sprung

for I am the  treasure

that is not forgot and rung by rung from the seabed

I am the treasure Christ died

to buy and the Kingdom come:

ransoming me from all reefs

and wreckage

forever

mary angela douglas 18 july 2021