Cloudbank 17

“Water Elergy” by Susanna Lee was the winner of the Cloudbank 17 Poetry Prize. 

Water Elegy / Susannah Lee
After Ryuichi Sakamoto

North was the signature we inherited,
not a blessing but a kinship with lamps

illuminating the hollow wick of nightfall. The febrile
night rising like steam from a croup kettle

seeking to heal. We sanctioned the dark
with fever & visions of light, the wheat fields

and bobolinks nesting late into the harvest,
a peony dropping its great globe of flower all at once.

Heat became us. We understood this and chose
to hoard it with prayers of mercy,

as if earth could hold a very warm mantle of snow,
as if the prayer wheel spun without touch or wind.

Compass point that defines all others. North,
when the river flood carries the yew and its roots

downstream whole and expectant, and the rain soaked
willow releases from the weight of abundance,

keels and rises with the dark earth of its own loss,
when the seas come to meet us, what sacred text

will we safeguard? What echo in what clear vein
will ping our pulsing song back to life?