We wonder how sundered night is as we scribble in our tattered logbook. Despite our exertions, the project continues, the outing that left footprints on the wave-smacked beach. Abandoned there: a pack of cigarettes, a dog collar, a sandal with a broken strap, a sun-bleached cassette, a bikini top, a scratched pair of sunglasses, and a coin whose nation has been effaced like a beach detaching from a continental shelf and sinking to the depths. On the horizon: the battered derricks we sometimes hear at night. We might have taken jobs mining liquid power from the earth. Instead, we survey terrain, note fluctuations, take dune-samples, film the tide’s articulations, enumerate our findings, and submit our reports. Rarely do we receive feedback. Sometimes we interpret silence as disapproval. Still, we prepare our reports. The pilings contend with the tides. Along the wharf, tourists are alternately giddy and sad. Sometimes we drink with them and embellish our tales. Sometimes they buy a round.
Christopher Brean Murray's book, Black Observatory (Milkweed Editions), was chosen by Dana Levin as the winner of the 2022 Jake Adam York Prize and was included on the New York Public Library's list of Best Books of 2023. Murray served as online poetry editor of Gulf Coast, and his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Washington Square Review, and other journals. He lives in Houston, TX.