I can see your beauty in the farm.
I don’t want to change that word, beauty,

I see it.

Not your face, more than that: your essence.
Even now. Even with all I wrote to Annette about.
Mostly her trees and the hurricane.

Below the layers of decay, I see what was.
It’s like I have inherited a shipwreck.
Below the layers of salt corrosion, seaweed,
and corals—if I scrape the barnacles—
I find a long-abandoned dream, I see you Gerard.

Are shipwrecks beautiful?
Shipwrecks are romantic to some…
which may be a disease of the mind to think this:
to chase something drowned in the ocean
and recount last surviving moments like a varsity game.

/

Cole W. Williams is a poet, essayist, and hybrid writer. Forthcoming work is with Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Canary, and Anti Heroin Chic. Williams recently won the Under Review’s annual chapbook contest for “The Pump” and was recognized by The Florida Review’s Humboldt Prize for the poem “Sunset.” Williams has attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, various writing residencies and will begin a Granta memoir class this fall.