The Structure On The Bluff
Frederick Pollack
Pointed inland, that jeep fulfilled
part of its mission before it burned.
One hopes its passengers and driver
rest peacefully at home.
Still at the tideline, snarls of iron
rust unobserved. Vacationers don’t need
the signs on them and along the beach
to know there may still be mines;
because there may be, there are.
In the structure on the bluff, the ghosts
of guns await the armada
that, having come, is always to arrive.
Defense, for those who planned it,
was a minor indiscretion of attack;
concrete was genius, though concrete,
as they watched the ships approach, became
a last embrace for those who manned it.
The lines of the building seek to fill all space.
It wins by being too costly to remove.
A twelve-inch shell crimped part of it;
a crack, time’s lightning, mars a wall
but, apart from some graffiti, nature
has been repelled; the ghosts have sworn
to outlast the primal enemy, the sun.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Many other poems in print and online journals.
