The Harbor

A stray from my usual

The Harbor

 

Not a head or a seed pod, the swans on black water heard it.

The children arrange their booty of claws and burnt matches.

And fragile hands collect themselves on chins and knee caps.

The salt rush, taunts and mower engines, the coconut crack.

The man who has sat for an hour, the effacement of the gulls.

A jewelery maker sold me feathers, paste, and small pearls.

'Gifts, gifts!' Something productive; if it weren't for that retching.

You drink the pearls, sweat toothed and tired. 'Easy as pills!'

 

The panic of train cars; we close together, a tight knuckled fist.

And our eyes, clean cellophane, if it weren't for that awful glint.

The still horizon of your quiet lips; How you pick your silences.

Earlier, we had picked bridal crowns from the trees, like so

many limp squid. You'll be betrothed by nine in the morning.

Soon, you'll carry plates of pork and crisp bread, you'll vomit

your pearls into his coffee in the morning; to sweeten the porridge.

The baby will be so full of pearls, his diaper will be a thing of value.

 

A tumult of fists on water, the gray head of a porpoise, dumb cork.

We'd fish the waters, covered in cod stink, your skirt hem in gut buckets.

Once, dancing on a sea turtle, you felt the ocean was your play bucket.

We sat cross legged then, ropes cross hatching our delicate thighs.

The water was collected, and our boat flipped easy as drift wood.
The rats with chicken bones, the feast left overs, fell from the boat

softly as mushrooms.We gripped the splinters with our hungry palms.

 

Delirious, a city of crabs; we spread to the sun, fanning our throats.

Now, we're desert creatures, appalled with the ocean all together.

 

Reviews

[R J Askew]

Love this one. It's a class act, spins the plate for me. Ocean for me always symbolises the place from whence we crawled. Maybe desert symbolises the dessication of death. After all we are n-tenths water. I love the little echos of childhood times. They cld be a poem on their own. You make me think of my own times of sand and salt and sea. Crab shells have some magic. Then you inweave the more mature themes and concerns. Also there are other little triggers on the way to them: the mowing of lawns in the burbs maybe, thought I think I....

[Gandré]

very complex read. I learnt few new words.. I had to focus to stay in your plot. Many great lines. I was able to imagine your harbor - and I felt a bit darkness, while reading it. You transfer emotions. good job, outstanding poem.

[Sean Allen]

THis was a beautiful read, I truly enjoyed the images of the rats with chicken bones and I guess the pearls went over my head. I stumbled a bit at reading two lines in a row that end with bucket.

[R J Askew]

...am adding dabs of my own memories as I read. So the poem is pulling little triggers in this reader at least. The word 'mower' suggests middle-class stability to me, and, maybe, the stability of childhood before being cast into the seas of confusion. Though not all childhoods are stable. Still, that's what 'mower' does for me. I see my own father mowing a lawn with a hand mower. The stuff about panic is a wonderful new wobble in the spin of the plate. I especially like 'the still horizon of your quiet lips' which seems uber poetic to me. It also makes me feel as if I am in a fine art American painting of some Florida or West Coast beach. Is that a pelican I syp? Everything seems to be going tits up in the third verse as life becomes increasingly less childishly romantic and we are preoccupied with its greed that we continue it, life that is. The play buckets to gut buckets connection is a brilliant dab, as that is just how it is, The rats with chicken bones made me think of a street bum in my city, whom I view for his poetic potential whenever I pass him. He seems to have fallen out of the boat at some point in his life and ended up a drunk chasing the odd chicken bone of comfort. But is he any worse off than a dude with a wife and three kids, who owns his own top of the range mower? The poem's eye is turned outward from yourself on this occasion and shows how well you can sift IT out there and nail it down as a great read. And the last line is a perfect dismount, like one of those parllel bar gynmasts who lands on his feet and throws his hands in the air for a perfect 10. Keep at it mate.