The Fort

From the weathered boards knots pop like the eyes of potatoes. From brick salients not a clink of a pupil in a loop- hole. Cannon, yes, but without their kick. Ironically or entirely appropriately, who can say, the Fort will not admit us. The reenactors are going home; we see them retreat, backs x’d with sus- penders, toward the forest housecleaned into state park. Ocean beyond the ramparts suggests that stem-celled seconds fiend- ishly agglomerate with fits and starts into unprecedented forms. And so who cares that a fort’s built on a sand bar, that we don’t make it in, and go only so far round the perimeter.