Los Angeles Shoals

Aurora. Cockrow. Day-peep.
Rifles whirligig down the line.
Each nozzle endows the next.

The centrifugal hands of the cadets
Harmonize. Like dressage.
To think of weaponry as dressage.

Motion associates involuntarily.
Also, light. To simply say:
Morning did warm things with light

And their guns, indistinguishing
The piaffe. Similar discipline.
A man scrapes barnacles

From the Newport Beach pier.
Early. So no one’s watching.
The line divides delicacy

And demean. To mean
This as a part of speech: the verb.
The long stretch of morning where

Man begs the piers to give
At risk of probing, buffaloed eyes.
At home, safe as the long-remembered

Delicacy they are. Before day, grace.
Clumsy owns the light. And how.
So long owns the land. And now.

Will Camponovo studied poetry at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington and has contributed poems to Iron Horse Literary Review, The Seattle Review, and Best New Poets 2011. He lives in and works for the city of Los Angeles.