Ebb and Flow

 

The seagull shrieking in the near distance

is the cry of my heart for the sea

I so long to be near once again.

The puffy slanted clouds are held

by magnetic tendrils I can almost feel

gently being pulled like a marionette

across the pure turquoise sky

with fingers tracing deep 

in the ocean current.

Sometimes, I like to close my eyes

and I can still smell the sea 

and its lusty yearning back for me. 

Painting by Peder Balke, 'Stormy Sea' c. 1870 Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons. In Public Domain. 

Grainy Drops

The rain makes it better.

   The rain is falling.

The hour disperses into sky.

Does it?

Save your words-

The rain makes it better.

Smell space freeing itself...

You will see

          when the mist

                     settles   lifts

                  when the fog

it will be too bright to see directly

-until-

Due West             when the sunsets

            Pacific.

The tide takes it all in, licking and swallowing the shore

like an ice cream with crunch.

They taste the same. Put your tongue in the rain

drops.

Nothing is the matter,

only salt                    remains.

Painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 'Sea and Rain' (1865) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Totem poll

The final straw of September twenty-
ninths slit of smirking Black Moon-
the Indians have hung onto summer
with the same tenacity as their water dances
around the fire-I feel-
too long, feathered, and hot.
Sweltering shaded shelters there are none,
and I am white, weak and wrong,
along native latitudinal lines
not strong enough to weather
this Fall-
the pressure is too high to let go.

It makes me want to tear off my clothes
and immerse this blue skin in the sixty-three degrees
Pacific ocean
pacific specifically
calm
cool
collected.
................
September is succumbing to
October who strikes us sober.
Chill.
Breaths like poetry help acclimate me
in worlds like Autumn.





By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.