Second Place Winner, January 2004 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, January 2004

FIRST WATCH
Terry Lucas
(About Poetry Forum)

If I sit perfectly still, how will I tell
the starboard from the port
of tomorrow? In the dark,

I believe in the red and purple fists
of the four-o’clocks, the midwatch
of my mother’s coffee pot, the stories

that bubble up the metal throat
and sob their way through the curved glass
of her lips, swollen with memory of the blaze.

If I ask her how she stays up for the eclipse
of my father, her answer is the sound of a mother
wren, pushing its young from the nest,

depending on the metal flecks in the bone
to line up with true north, like iron shavings
on a page gather around the poles of a magnet

below the surface. Which way do I go? North or farther
into my father? If I sit perfectly still
on the lip of the crow’s nest, will I hear his fist clenching

before it strikes the bell and sounds the alarm
for us all? I ask my mother again,
when will the watch end? I listen for the sound of metal

in the bone, I hear the water start to whisper,
bargaining with the blue flame below the surface,
somewhere off the starboard, or is it
the four-o’clocks?

Judge John Poch’s comment: “This poem has a subtle, ghostly quality that doesn’t sacrifice syntax and grammar for emotional ‘effects.’ The objects in the poem resonate and those ‘flecks in the bone’ make me a believer. The poem has a nice sense of restraint, too. I’m not bowled over with common sentiments. The repetitions are lovely. Having said that I like the restraint, I do wish I knew a little more about the mother’s ‘watch.’”