Monday, September 23, 2013

Life Between Elements


Today's poem was inspired by the prompt to tell the truth but tell is slant.  Here is my draft:

Life Between Elements

The writer who spoke only of frozen
seas and the sea birds who linger then land
only to stitch lacy perimeter
between what is our realm and what is theirs,

unexpectedly discovered the dolphin’s
left body; that last greying sun-dried weight
of almost picked clean flesh before the next
realm opens like a slack-jawed sky.  He was

lost to it, and to the way life redirects
eddies around what the crows have warned us
to avoid.  For he had not read the signs
was in the process of rising himself

Sea birds drying their wings like scarecrows on
jagged rocks.  Heart becomes sea; not frozen,
but cold and deep enough to be sewn into lace.

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