Note: I am putting the following poem up for your enjoyment, with the understanding that I may take it down again should I decide to submit it for a contest or publication. As a dear friend who read an earlier draft noted, this poem is SO me...
Child of Waters
What magnetic moonlit tidal tug
Is it that pulls me off beam,
Sends me downstream, reeling,
Ever descending, rushing through
Rock-strewn, sand-barred creeks
Into gushing, swelling rivers...
Floating, fallen-timber rudderless,
Swept headlong to deeper waters?
Perhaps an accident of birth--
My winter-born sister Alaska
Speaks of liquid crystal, flowing:
Iron-brittle, creeping glaciers,
Gold-flecked beds, melt-floods,
Plowing, charging, galloping...
Fulminant meeting engagements
In resilient sounds and shallow seas.
Summer-born Hawaii whispers
Of fearsome typhoon and tidal wave,
Lead-white snow-capped peaks
And rain-drenched emerald slopes,
Vertigo-high waterfalls plunging,
Teeming pools and rivulets receiving...
Volcanoes and black sand beaches
Stranded by Everest-deep ocean.
I, too, am marked by waters,
Born a Scorpio, for good and ill,
Familiar with glittering frosty mornings,
Drifting snow, cumulonimbus towers,
Ear-splitting, rain-gorged supercells...
I have seen swirling, green-sky terror
And sat insomniac through hurricanes,
Two dark, one white, and grinned.
I am drawn, polarized, once again
To deep water, to saline amniotic fluid
From whence I came, a storm unnamed,
Tropical depression, seeking solace
And renewal of my formidable core
Until my own lion's roar resounds,
Drowning out the screaming, searing,
Sticky cacophony that hounds me.
8 comments:
If you will take this down to enter it somewhere, I unfortunately can only hope you do it soon. I am a child of water, too... in my own way.
But this hit something deep inside of me. It's wonderful. I don't know that I am a good "judge" of poetry. If it moves me or startles me so that I think, feel, or see something with fresh eyes--it's good poetry in my eyes. AND if the words beg to be spoken.
This poem did those things for me.
As you well know I love this poem Dr. M :)
I'd like to hear that lion's roar myself, sometime - shall we work on it?
The tides have a pull for all of us, some feel it more strongly than others. George Harrison, "I'm a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul".
Your poem is so expressive, Michael. It has so much movement and your word combinations pull and tug the reader in rhythmic flows. I think it is very nicely written. Thank you for sharing.
Jeannette has spoken eloquently of the feelings evoked by this. I think this is wonderful, and repeated reading only makes it better. This is a poem of the senses and it sets mine reeling.
Being an earthy Virgo sort, I'm fascinated by the imagery here.
The gushing, swelling river, grinning at the swirling storms, and being so strongly drawn to the water is foreign to me. Beautifully expressed, indeed, but foreign.
Give me terra firma any day. ♥
Beautiful autobiographical piece...so lucid...yes, so you...
Thank you, dear friends!!!
This is what a poem should be and these are the feelings a poem should evoke. Very insightful, good child of waters. And beautiful way to express it.
Post a Comment