Someone was saying something about the sea,
how it is a dream that dies and is reborn,
about how things depart then reappear,
how nobody wants to leave
yet nobody wants to stay behind.
Someone was saying how there is a graveyard in her pupils
where the tombstones lean to brace themselves,
but the wind continues, anyway.
It’s been a long morning, and someone said something
about the stars, those scars of light
that heal without a sound each sunrise,
how everything, yet nothing, seems to change.
Someone mentioned how living is dying.
We started to believe the morning wouldn’t end.
Someone was saying how the break was over,
and no one noticed. Then someone said something
about the future, how it isn’t what it used to be,
how it’s so predictable.
Domenic Scopa is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Johnson Poetry Prize and Garvin Tate Merit Scholarship. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry and translations have been featured in The Adirondack Review, Reed Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Superstition Review, and many others. He is currently a Lecturer at Plymouth State University and a Writing Center Specialist at New Hampshire Technical Institute. His first collection of poems, The Apathy of Clouds (FutureCycle Press), is forthcoming in 2018. He currently reads manuscripts for Hunger Mountain and is an Associate Editor at Ink Brush Publications.
Photographer’s Note: This photo represents both the paradoxical viewpoints found in this poem as well as the visual imagery of a thought-provoking, mysterious ocean. For instance, when we have expectations of a sunny morning and we see those clouds, at first thought, they tend to dampen the moment. But for this photographer anyway, a paradox exists as partial cloud cover makes a sunrise brighter and more beautiful. When life seems to be turned upside down and uncertain, we are reminded that the one constant is change. Conversely, we also know that through any change there is one constant. Without fail, each and every day the sun will rise, and the sun will set…no matter what. For that reason, this photo was chosen to represent, among other things, that the “future…is predictable”.