Displacements

"I am a little breath that always goes the distance
Longing requires...."     ~ Larry Levis


It is flooding in the south and in the north
and all the islands between, so the rice crops
shed their pearls before any harvest 
and ferry boats topple their load
into the mouth of the bay. This was  
a country with two seasons. But now
there is only one, into which whole towns
disappear, all the way to their church steeples.
When everything we used to know is erased
from the face of the earth, where does our
longing go? As evening fell, when I was a child
I would turn my eyes to the hills, crowned
by two radar dishes and a haunted seminary.
We lived at the bottom of this teacup, and
the world lay somewhere beyond. 
Archimedes discovered that an object
submerged in liquid displaces a volume 
equal to that of itself.  How long 
has it been since we were tipped out, 
since we fell from the rim?  We strain
to hear the sound a pebble makes
bouncing off rock, arriving.