WARPE LAND

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Her home lies…miles further south, nearer the Carpatt...as they first drive in he surveys the scene and makes a proclamation…“warpe land,” that is…he actually says it, “that is”…she frowns…he has no awareness of its sound in the air around him…this “girdle of intolerable pretention,” as he once said of Shelley…“warpe land,” that is land reclaimed from the sea…she knows this…she has known it her whole life…still she nods as if he has taught her something…“nod as if in love and in love you will be”…he was her teacher…she his student…he taught her Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley too and then took her to bed…nearly a decade has passed…she is thirty…now she is his and he hers…it is, he says, a “skein of pronouns tangled by the years”…she sees his eyes somersault slightly when he turns a phrase and she permits him this pleasure as she permitted him the insight as they drove…this is not the first time she has brought him home…it is the first time without her parents alive...they stop at the house, now vacant...continue to the cemetery, not vacant...flowers are left behind, tears along with them...they go out walking past the hamlet of Biltonhaven…once it was a port for vessels that went to sea…time has made deposits and now it is separated from the ocean…“sand bank,” he says, in the same tone he used for “warpe land”…but she laughs now and shakes her head…no nodding...“no”…it is a wide band of rich alluvial soil bounded by the bank……it has rich mineral deposits…she says “bank,” again, “deposits” again…now she is onto something…he hurries ahead to escape what is clear to both of them is a victory on her part…rising into view is the dock tower on the other side of the river as well as trees…but the waters themselves are invisible…large ships pass across the horizon land as if pulled on stage-tops…but the waters themselves are invisible…“it is below the sea level,” he says…then he stops…she catches up to him…she stares at him…he has not moved since the word “level”…is he sick or worse?…he is searching for a word or phrase…this strange old man…he is licking his lips as if to bring it out…he looks at her to loosen his thoughts…she looks back at him…still staring…her eyes are wide enough to both frighten and inspire him…is it simple adoration or has she glimpsed something else?…impending eternity…he will not live forever…he will keep company with her…he thinks of her standing up from the bed…all of her strong youth apparent…the image stirs him and trips a wire in his mind…“sunk island,” he says…she presses against him and repeats what he has said…her strong youth apparent…it is not at all a depressing or dolorous land.