Je vous attends by Yves Tanguy

 

 
 
 
There’s someone, possibly hurt, missing.

 

     (These planks of wood are proof.)

 

There’s a hole somewhere.

 

     But that’s only part of the story I pieced

 

together from bits of shipwreck—

 

     the impenetrable fog, the disfigured

 

mess, makes meaning of all this.

 

     One black boot was washed up, its laces gone.

 

Somehow I know to look for the other. I stand

 

     near the sea but can’t see past the fog. Useless.

 

But still, I look and find, I think, something

 

     silent, and impassable, something the map

 

could never have predicted.
 
 
 

Nathan McClain is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017), a recipient of scholarships from The Frost Place and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a graduate of Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Ploughshares, American Poets, Sou'wester, Broadsided, and Tinderbox. He lives in Brooklyn.