Sunday, October 10, 2021

A Poem!


It wasn't long ago that I returned from a trip to the sea, and I wrote a poem about it. Enjoy! Also, there is nothing I love more than a good sea shanty, so enjoy that too. 

 

 

 

 

Sandpipers

 

In a whole life that goes

on beyond us, sandpipers

reckless and impeccable

skim the mist in a careless geometry

above the burbling clams and the Dionysian

feast of the gulls on the rust-red husks of crabs.


Each consecrated carapace

pulverized and luminous

makes a boardwalk of the shattered, a

glimmering carpet on which we shine:

Our lives, neither tragic nor mundane. Our bones entangled.

Our hearts persistent. The faith of kites above us.


The kitschy-kitschy of sea glass. Corpus

green with nutrients and dissolution.

Sea tawdry, sea songs, life at the edge of the world. The cobalt

outline of tide from the window’s ledge.

The swing where I cried when grief finally broke. The

sand-song of mopeds and dogs on the salt-dank air.


It is here always where I recall the imperative.

Where I re-learn the lesson of my divine 

irrelevance. Where I receive full clemency, where there is

only fervor for my blemished soul, where there is room for nothing

but the grand helpless lungs of the sea, the sandpipers

free on the brine of its draft, all things found and all forgotten.

 

--Kristen McHenry

 




3 comments:

masterpoethere@gmail.com said...

Exquisitely worded and incredibly descriptive poem!

Dale said...

It's such a treat to get a McHenry poem again!

"impeccable" cuts so many ways: such a joy! They are always very kempt and orderly looking, something of the fussy elderly Frenchman, comme il faut, about them. (But they do nevertheless peck). (But, on the other other hand, they are incapable of sin, or would that be impeccant?). And "reckless and impeccable" catches in its sound so wonderfully their frenetic dashes just ahead of the wave.

And then there's "free on the brine of its draft," which, good Lord, so beautifully apt. You are just magnificent. Rob a bank, quit your damn job, and write poems all day. Please?

The Good Typist said...

Don't tempt me, Dale. :) But seriously, thank you.