Mecox Nunnery & Saint Dominic

In Water Mill the last glacier still moans

it can be heard in the nuns’ evening prayer

as the candles melt, their wax

beads flowing down the meridians

over chains of amino acids

proteins electrifying the organic matrix

scallop shells, desperate for mineralization.

She leaves the prayer hall of Villa Maria

& out in the flushing wetlands of Mecox Bay

in the clumps of undulating cordgrass

culls young finfish from their mudholes

as they feed on minute phytoplankton & zooplankton

the larvae of shellfish, brought in with the tide.

Shorebirds, windbirds, gather around her

they peck at the fiddler crabs caught in the Spartina grass.

She runs her pale fingers through the mud

over the lenses of sand in the inter-tidal marsh

feels the cool, aerated spring water from the glacial font

the headlands, that has drained across the outwash plain

from Seven Ponds, Mill Pond, Mill Creek, Hayground Cove

Calf Creek, Burnett Creek, Sam’s Creek, to the Ocean.

Her hair loosens in the cross winds of the dunes.

At the Seapoose her mouth fills with roses

& her secretions rush in & out of the bay.

She ignores the litter of angels

filling all her floating orbs

the tumescence of the estuaries

& returns to town, to the derelict windmill

whose sails baffle the continuum.

She climbs the tailpole, her habit caught

in the spindles, the pinion gears

slides out onto one of the blades

as it methodically slices the sky

the moist, gleaming membrane of the spheres

& stares at a comet’s tail. It vanishes

in the tapestries of Saint Dominic.