Mare Island each building had left behind only the history of its impermanence

Brooks Roddan, Mare Island

The white mare breaking loose – a constellation in flight leaping clear from a ship, then she’s running with the breakers, her eyes wild for green. Yegua blanca the caballeros shouting yegua blanca, O beauty streaming into the wind, into the deafening light. Isla de la Yegua, Mare Island:

dazzle breaking over a bowsprit, speckle noise, words for an island. Words for deerskin, bone earring, for smallpox, glinting in deep-water channels. No known word for green. You will say shadow like leaves where fennel grows tall in welding shops, dry docks.

Five hundred ships – Prometheus, Jupiter, the destroyers, Swift Boats that went down the Mekong into fields of water – the Pacific closing over them, the white horses running. A mare grazing in shadows of leaves, leaves shadowing the sea. Passing further and further inside all its broken mirrors.

12