Poet in public
I am the parrot
brought from the sea:
I speak like a ruffian
to the light.
Poems on the topic: sea
Poems on the topic “sea” on Poets.by.
War preparations
Hearing of the war, I in a sudden fit
cut off all my beard
and wash my feet in the sea.
A uniform will make mad people
of all sides, thinking themselves
expected by the king.
The unknown sea
The sea I miss
I know not:
the otherwise things,
the way of ice,
all the bells and bonfires,
the land at night.
I do not see much:
only an indifferent heart.
Unbroken
In several places, the sea—
like money, the copy
of a copy. But having
no mind to break, it is
the best resort of water
on a fine still night.
Stewardship
Before the mouth,
who owned me?
We set fire to the marsh
and to the swallow,
full of false Latin.
Our anchor is a salt-cellar.
At evening in the harbor,
horses run to the sea.
Sea Levels
low tide
we comb the ancient peat
for footprints
drowned forest
the gull’s cry turns eldritch
undead stumps
4000 years later
sprout bladderwrack
our shared excitement
at scraps of root-bark
seaside town
all the colors of ice cream
against the Atlantic
the high street is already
lower than the beach
Tisha B’Av just past
Sunset
sun settling on the sea
like a public head
I cannot understand
what I have been today
The Song of the Womb
The song of the womb begins
on a minor key among the bivalves
and sea cucumbers, whose tunes
are all palindromes and serve
a purely decorative purpose.
The song of the womb sounds best
played by a full orchestra, despite
the many adaptations for solo flute.
It’s got rhythm—that probably goes
without saying—and sheet music.
It can be used to communicate
over great distances underwater.
Scientists say the song of the womb
may predate the evolution
of consciousness! It is not, however,
the first choice of the womb itself,
Dreamliner
Aircraft. It sounds like something one could learn: how to breathe, how to oxidize. But this craft is the kind that floats, and it is enormous. It takes us the full width of Norway at its widest point to reach cruising altitude.
The Boeing 787 is nicknamed the Dreamliner, and its crowded cabin, though far from silent, is filled with a lovely hush of white noise that makes it difficult to stay awake. The only light left in the sky is a band of red above an oddly low horizon which goes before us like Yahweh leading the Jews out of Egypt, on and on into what my body assures me should be night.
five-hour sunset
a movie plays on the back
of every seat
Lost, found, whatever
A shark is a compass
that always points toward blood.
This may not seem of great utility
if you’re lost at sea.
But cut yourself & wait —
you’ll be found soon enough.
Fulgurite
Lightning roots deep into the sand,
donning an instant sheath of glass:
a seemingly pointless exercise in self-glove.
Clap of thunder.
Could it be, though, that radiance tires of itself?
Nowhere in the alleged blackness of space
is there any relief from the ticking,
pulsing, clusterfucks of stars
except on cold planets.
Who can blame lightning
for burrowing in like a tick?
Even we humans, full of darkness as we are,
go on pilgrimage to the ocean,
dream of girls with gills,
get buried up to our necks in sand
or swim with porpoises, whose
Correspondence
How did they do it, those long-
distance lovers of old, waiting
months for a letter to make
its way by sea?
And when it did, oh the slow
parsing of its every word!
Onion-skin paper
like a bed of salt.
Cursive writing
like Jonah’s gourd vine,
the work of a single night.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: