There will be no one to rock you but the waves,
And the waves don't care, the waves don't care
Even about being the waves.
Only you will care about them - with your precise eye
Measuring their length and breadth, height and color.
You'll learn the wind.
You'll know thunderheads at an insane distance,
The moon's grey shift, the dawn's red slick. You'll see
The ocean's defeat of perspective.
You will know these things like you know the halfmoons
Of your nailbeds, hardbitten, salt-stung. Knowing them,
You'll live to smell the diesel sweat
Of a thousand ships, become one with tar and rope,
With the waves that couldn't care. Knowing them,
You'll know yourself, your distance.
Knowing them, no one else will ever know you.
posted by Reen |
I'm resisting this poem, rather strongly. Should I? Is it because it's using a poem I love to say . . . what? What does this poem say? It's not that I don't think WS should be open for revision, review, and even fun . . . it's just, what's the project? This just reads to me like low-grade New York Schoolery.
posted by Reen |
Now back in NYC and super sleepy. I will now return to my regularly scheduled life. Poems? Soonish.
In the meantime, you can listen to an .mp3 of my alter ego, Maureen Thurson, reading her work at Pete's Candy Store, thanks to Poetic Brooklyn.
posted by Reen |
