| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
Meg Early (WHYSCI) Tara A. Elliott GRANDFATHER Caitlin Palo (MARIERAVINA)PATHOS
I am every one of Botticelli's angels
Peering over the lip of the saucer of my life.
A cherub with the temper of a babe,
Smiling and giggling or twisting up and crying,
An ambivalent soul lost in search of recognition.
Some one, everyone must
See me,
From the hollow in which you stand.
I am unmistakably here. Bare assed,
And waiting, starved for understanding.
For Billy Collins,
And so, I take you
After “Fishing on the Susquehanna in July”
crabbing on the Chesapeake in August--
Into the flat bottom boat,
the floor paint flaking old and grey;
Into the steady vibration of engine,
the diesel rising like broken wind against salted air;
Into the newborn scream of the gulls
which hover motionless above, as though attached by wire.
Into the heat of the sun, baking skin crisp,
until all you can smell is fresh sweat, old fish, cheap beer;
Until all you can see is the blueness of the shells
mounting, mounting in the tan bushel baskets,
the whiteness of the boat against the blue, blue sky,
the flat bottom rocking, rocking from side to side,
up one wave, down the other, into the early morning
wake of a thousand ghostly trout liners.
And there on the horizon where the sky greets the water,
you meet yourself
and know that always, always there will be this.
And in that moment, you turn to me,
grin with your cigarette pinned between your teeth,
and say
this is poetry.
I could see in the depths of her eyes
Thoughts too dark for words.
Images of other eyes, glazed over, encrusted with dirt
Causing her to tremble on the verge
Between understanding tears, and confused questions.
Wondering if the prison sealed with rain and small roots
Is really a prison at all,
Or if it is only a place where the man inside
Is no more a prisoner
Than the laughing white daisies are jailors.
She walks beside me,
Wide-eyed and silent.
Until we reach the sea
And I explain to her with my hands
That, like the sea birds with wings of air,
The light in her grandfather's eyes
Has flown towards the sun,
And their blue is now part of the sky.
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