Robert Miltner

HUNTINGTON BEACH


The country ends here. Sharp gray slate,
hard as consonants, usurps the soft earth.

Where waves curl round as vowels, Erie
begins its land’s end lapidary of stones.

In the distance is the horizon’s long division:
below, lake; above, sky; between, shore.

No wonder I think in threes: land, water, sky.
No binary opposites, no polemics, just

the even-minded triad that accommodates
third parties, third dimensions, the Third World.

Clouds curtain the blue; the coming storm’s
rumble is gray flux, tumult. Gulls fly in place.

Suddenly a lightning bolt cracks the sky as if
it is a window and the instant is a rock, as if

an electric string simultaneously ties together
fire, air, earth, and water. I’m in my element.

Robert Miltner teaches in the Northeast Ohio MFA through Kent State University. His twelfth chapbook, Imperative, is forthcoming from All Nations Press. He is working on a novel, Tempest, and a collection of poems, Hotel Utopia. Miltner edits the Raymond Carver Review.