Disappearance

The Day of Disappearance
                                        for Shell

Everything that moves

            disappears, as I learned once

photographing my brother rowing

                        our green jon boat against

a winter sky.  From each end,

            we pushed out through spiked rushes

and button-bushes in low light. 

                        Holding the shutter open

on “bulb” and the camera lens

            fixed on my backlit brother,

I recorded on a single

                        frame our time-lapse glide

to the lake’s center, thinking:

            this is how we see the still-life

of time, how we know the pale

                        secrets of motion and light.

Later, in the prints, his thick

            arms are gone where they moved

the most, the paddle blurs

                        into a brown ghost of wood

dipped in the pond’s silver plane,

            surface water shines like winter

clouds through his already

                        transparent body—but,

                       

then again, this is how we go: 

            first, the arms and legs in motion,

fading; the trunk luminous

                        like photos overexposed;

and, finally, the whelming

            flood of cold water pouring

straight through the empty

                        spaces of bone and heart.