It’s a familiar script, a gull’s

attention to wind, gray

petal, feather-slammed,

accustomed to bullying, not me,

I turn my back on it, claim

this pool room’s lit pasture,

its geography of Bells, and contemplate

the erosions, a house

inching closer to the shore,

one already toppled, gate open

to cliff edge and horizon,

we’re all headed for the bluff,

the gale, its clarifying salt,

may as well enjoy the view,

I do, and when I step outside

for a smoke, night coming on,

its final verse and chapter,

who knows what I become

rowing off , wind borne,

my cigarette knitted to the dark,

all evidence pulled asunder.

###

Adam Chiles’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Permafrost and RHINO. His first book Evening land (Cinnamon Press, UK) was nominated for the 2009 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He is the recipient of scholarships and grants from the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, the Canada Council, and the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he was the 2003–2004 Reginald S. Tickner Writing Fellow. Adam is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Northern Virginia Community College.

“Bluff” originally appeared in THRUSH Poetry Journal in May 2014.