Asinara

in Sardinia

mean winds press the heather

this lost island sinking in silver

holds huts of sighs

and a fence of tide, wild horses

stray careless between stone and growth,

let me be your windbreak,a slight warmth

there is nobody beyond my sight

Reviews

[Eilis]

My favorite thing about this poem is the way it turns at the end. The opening of the landscape giving way to a longing to be important to the person being addressed. It's a beautiful way of expressing the feeling. It brings to mind a thousand little pictures that could connect to the longing and bring the relationship full circle.

But, aside from that, the description of the landscape makes everything feel alive. The wind, the huts, the ocean. These things are all real, living in someplace where your poem makes me anxious to go to.

There is a touch of harshness in environment you've described, but it is not uninviting. It makes me think of myths and the people who constructed myths to make the harshness of living intertwine with the beauty they also saw there. Equality of two conditions, maybe. I'll be thinking about that.

Excellent poetry.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

beauty in your words...makes me want to go there and sink into the silver and cheer as horses run by, nostrils flaring...as i think of Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"---this island, there are answers there, yes, answers blowing in the wind.
as John said...your compressed language speaks volumes.
j.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Gosh Leslie, I don't know if you have been there but you made me long to see it. Your first stanza is sublime. It entreated me to slip into the vision, 'huts of sighs'. As always your less is more is like a concentrate as each word is watered with vision and expression and emotion!