for Delaware City Oil Refinery
From here I promise you will see it all —
those clusters of towers
their various diameters and heights
lifted into cloud-clotted sky
bespeckled by summer sun
grounded by a low plinth
composed of wide shallow domes
grounded by marshes clotted with nests and lairs
clusters of golden phragmites
rising up there
then water, lapping
where eels unscroll, abiding in the dark patches
on their way to the Sargasso Sea
not a sea as you’d imagine it, just
the ragged floating place they dream of —
a falling sequence of materials
from solid to liquid to gas, a game
of animal vegetable mineral —
old cast-iron composed of scraps of dying stars
grounded by a burning fall
torn caterwauling out of the ground
casting fire and steam into that floating sky
while within, the compression of life forms —
fern bones and beetle wings from long ago
transformed to gasoline and other gases, or lighter fuel
diesel laced with hydrogen, or propane —
gases, liquids, steam, fire — fluid forms
in drifted tatters lapped by sky and water
smithereens unfurled, swarming
toward some remembered place.
Anne Yarbrough’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Delmarva Review, and Gargoyle. She lives along the lower Delaware River.