| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
Paul Greenhow (CHESIL) CORRUPTION OF LIGHT Gray Squirrel WINTER FOG Ariegaw L.E. GarciaNO BOATS SAIL
Our longing for the summer birds is strong
and fishing boats are still in port today.
The winter gales have blown both wild and long
The starving children keen their mournful song,
their parents paint themselves in the old way.
Our longing for the summer birds is strong.
The village floods the harbor, strikes the gong,
sun-dancers whirl with hope to calm the bay.
The winter gales have blown both wild and long.
A thousand eyes look seaward and the throng
breathes in, but boats will not bring fish this day.
Our longing for the summer birds is strong
Their eyes cast down, the dancers edge along
this battered wharf, a storm gusts on the bay,
the winter gales have blown both wild and long.
The pots and nets lie empty, before long
the first starved child will die, perhaps today.
The winter gales have blown both wild and long,
our longing for the summer birds is strong.
Needing the sorrow like a plague
Or to wonder where the affection went
Where's it's buried in the shallow paper.
If I was Superman, or Jesus... some invulnerable,
Supposedly I could wade the sea without a hint,
All the way to paradise and back, still smiling.
My milliseconds, instead, are wrapped with shadows,
Ordinary stone raises a fist against the sky
Making shade upon those interpersonal meadows.
Easier to look outside at monkeys filled with brains
Nodding at solutions to all those worries racked with guilt,
Telling the truth of the matter, the way to ease the pain.
Easier to find the pieces scattered on the sand,
Adding the edges first, that thing that's truly desired...
Children don't need to investigate why they cry.
Humbled by the code of human nature, blips and inkblots,
Morse could sit for hours and decipher that song...
On a tour of human kindness and well-intended advice.
Maybe I can't stand the cruelty of missing her so long,
Each drop of ice like an insult to her place, like a duty,
Never implying the purity of her love, absolute.
Though tomorrow will be wasted again, on passing time,
All the nights I've stayed too late, filling them black,
Filling the hours with darkness to keep on waiting.
Tomorrow melts together, then, continuing this stage,
Every one of them beating an empty irritating song...
Repeating the same notion, my love, my still-water ocean.
Dark Moods
It rises from the bottom or maybe it descends from above sometimes you see
it come in from out there floating along the surface of the Bering Sea
a twist on deception in the noiseless freeze all I hear is the motion
of the water against the boat and the fog horn that shatters
the muffled effect of molecules packed tightly together
bone cold obscures my reason unable to control
the chattering of my teeth pulling the nets into
the boat I convulse the line slices into my
fingers icy rage is never planned it
just happens like this thick
winter fog that swallows
you alive leaving no
clues to which
way shore
lies
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Poems entered from About Poetry Forum, 2001
