"cormorant" poems
Something awful happened late last night,
And here I lie awake at six AM
Upon the sand of Santa Monica.
The cars drive by, but I don’t notice them.
I used up all my gas to get away
From the ****** pond on my bathroom rug.
It’s more than bleach can handle and I’m scared
That I’ve found a more seductive drug.
Fish intestines line the pier and I
Feel no misery for gutless souls.
The rocks are caked in birdshit, kelp and shells
And, as if in mourning, the cormorant calls.
Upon the rusty handrails, seagulls gossip
Just like feathered girls with brains, persisting
To trumpet my depravity in savage squawks,
And to harass the rest of us for existing.
The white-wimpled, cruel, sadistic nuns
Choose an injured sea lion as their prey.
Cowardly, they flee at his sharp barks–
It’s guts that will decide who wins today.
***** creep over the brown-furred body.
Fighting for its life, it bites the shell
And kills its fellow lifeform. When given
The chance, I’ll defend myself as well.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 1:50 AM UTC
In the silence that follows the storm
when the cormorant cleans her wings
and the chaffinch in the tree sings,
I'll be there
weaving my words through your hair
and blowing kisses in the wind.
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 2:26 AM UTC
I couldn't see, but water
reflecting, it danced from the sun
black cormorant dove under stars and pearls of sea
for silvery fish to fill his beak
a small boat I rowed
long through water weeds, cat tail reeds
paddles cut the diamond day sparkling
sandy shores mollusk strewn
rippled shells shimmering blue
oysters bubbled, shallows breathing
seagull smiled watchful scheming
a beach fire to warm the night
the dusky sun, no longer to keep
soon the moon between the trees
radiant, it wakes the stars from sleep
Aug 7, 2012
Aug 7, 2012 at 1:42 PM UTC
Hood Canal
I couldn't see, but water
reflecting, it danced from stars of sun
Black cormorant dove under stars and pearls of sea
silvery fished his netted beak
A small boat left untied to float, I rowed
weaving cat tail reeds, long through water weeds
Paddles cut my diamond day - sparkling
jewel of soul swayed, prayed to dive me deeper
Sandy shores mollusk strewn
rippled shells covered shimmering blue
Oysters bubbled shallows breathing
seagull smiled watchful scheming
Beach fire to warm the night
and rock the dusky sun to sleep
the coming moon between trees
dark night, the stars to weep
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 9:33 AM UTC
It was a lilac day, a dream of scented heaven
what world sings of this blue, green summer?
Early morning raindrops splash giant maples,
droplets of sun, above far hills
alighting flowering fields, with flashing wings
of tiny sparrows
Cormorant swoops, the falling sky, far beyond
clouds of pink edge the bluest sky
silvery fish, below in cooling waves
blue herons stalk long where
seaweed sways
Sunlight poured, warming mossy woods
tallest trees breathing steam - spectrally
lichen blooms, tiny flowers in the sun
before the dawn of washing rain
a silent ancient forest
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 10:52 AM UTC
Gunpowder blue sky
yet no blue, really
except for the blue
wrapped into the spectrum
of black to grey to white
A storm blows in
the sea in an uproar
no holds barred
no remorse for the cormorant
or the gull
in these fierce swells
We know nothing of power
until we know the sea.
We know nothing of journeys
until we journey upon waters
as wild as these.
Odysseus would have shied
from this salt caldron
from these wind-tossed waves
stayed on some pleasant rock
imbibing the lotus.
And who would blame him?
Only a fool
or a sailor without hope
would venture into the teeth
of this tempest.
And that sailor would have cause
to regret his choice
would understand the depths
of his folly
as he slipped into darkness
and clasped hands
with the legions of the drowned
asleep in the swirl of the sea.
Nov 26, 2016
Nov 26, 2016 at 5:38 PM UTC
Cold winter river
Cormorant upholds his wings
Black on rock and ice
May 18, 2010
May 18, 2010 at 9:06 AM UTC
*When the sun slants
on wings smelling fish
fly the cormorants
to where the home is.
Their memory is a lake
with bountiful food
bill's all the take
that makes living good.
In between the catch
when enough seems done
find a dry patch
hold the wings to sun.
If wishes were heard
it's all I would want
to be turned into a bird
and what else but cormorant!*
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 9:37 AM UTC
The Cormorant was the darkest ship,
As dark as a ship could be,
Not only the paint was pitted black
From the funnels to the sea,
But deep inside in its rusted gloom
In the echoes from its shell,
It was like a monster roamed abroad
Released from the depths of hell.
It roared and echoed by day and night
As the boilers turned the *****
Lurching across every wave that might
Try to break its hull in two,
It was laden down with a thousand tons
Of a cargo that made it groan,
While breakers slapped its quivering sides
As it made its way back home.
The Captain stood on the shuddering bridge,
A man with a heart of steel,
He tried to control this raging beast
As he lashed himself to the wheel,
He gave no quarter to any man
Who would shirk, avoid his task,
But called the crew to witness his due
As the man was soundly lashed.
Down in the depths of the engine room
The firemen shovelled coal,
Each shovel sprayed like a black dismay
In the light of that glowing hole,
And steam built up on the pressure gauge
Of each boiler, one and two,
As men would fret, while running in sweat,
To do what they had to do.
The seas built up and the rain came down
As the Cormorant rolled and swayed,
Then lightning flashed and it ran to ground
Like an imp in a masquerade,
It left three dead on the afterdeck,
They hurried to help them there,
But the captain roared, ‘Throw them overboard,
We’ve more than enough to spare.’
A mutter grew up among the crew
As dark as the bosun’s hat,
I never knew what the crew would do
So I wasn’t in on that.
But the Captain disappeared from the bridge
And the wheel was swinging free,
With the Cormorant broadside to the waves
At mercy of wind and sea.
They said it must be a miracle
When we finally entered port,
The bilge half full of water, they said,
And the Captain fell overboard.
But the ship was done, had made its last run
As the fires went out in the hull,
Then raking through the mountain of ash
I found the late Captain’s skull.
David Lewis Paget
Apr 3, 2017
Apr 3, 2017 at 3:18 AM UTC
Placid water parts,
Up flies quick, a cormorant;
Epiphanous this!
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 1:26 AM UTC
If you observe occurrences in Nature
(The way a stone ripples the water,
The arc of a cormorant descending toward its prey)
You will note a precision in the movements
Which is utterly Pythagorean in its pattern
(Not that the natural world is without its inconsistencies;
The progress of a conflagration, for example, seems entirely random.)
It would seem that such a thing is good;
No, more than that, entirely holy,
All that is necessary and sufficient to prove beyond doubt
That which is equally necessary and central to our belief:
A plan--His plan--which governs all things under the sun.
Such notions, I have found to my considerable dismay,
Do not sit well with viceroys and archbishops,
Who have a vested interest in the maintenance of certain mysteries
(To be fair, they are not evil or necessarily even impious;
They are men, nothing more or less,
And have to navigate perilous, unmapped straits
Between the secular and the sacred; at their appointed time,
They will have their own commissions and omissions to answer for.)
Nevertheless, none of us can escape the certainty
That the root of our faults can be found at our own doorway,
And I cannot deny that the attempt
To reduce God’s works to a schematic of formulas, diagrams and triads
And then, preening and squawking as a peacock,
Trumpet the results to the world
(As if the mystery of faith would be no more
Than a handful of equations and charts)
Is simply the manure of arrogance, the flotsam of sinful pride.
I have had, these past few weeks,
Considerable leisure to pray and reflect;
My thoughts have not drifted, curiously enough,
To the great and sweeping, the grand and all-encompassing
(Perhaps that is due to the whys and wherefores of my current predicament, Perhaps due to the narrow window of my enclosure),
But rather to the most pedestrian of things:
The clarion of the wind in the trees prior to a brief summer storm,
The lover’s dance of the hummingbird and the lupin,
And I am comforted (and, I confess, a bit amused)
By the notion that Our Savior may take a moment from his labors
To watch them as well.
Dec 20, 2016
Dec 20, 2016 at 10:26 AM UTC
Watercolour,
Two tears of rain-
Coppered silk dissolves,
Hanging over time.
If Fuji remains
Tell me when
She is a bubbling crater
Steaming lake, fisher,
Cormorant
And all
Jun 10, 2025
Jun 10, 2025 at 1:29 AM UTC
Heat lives.
It breathes.
It settles down over your prone body and presses on your chest, stealing your breath. The sweat on your forehead becomes tears, while the creature looks down with its ashen eyes... smiling...
Heat is a black cormorant, which dives deep into the heavens and scoops up the stars, spitting out only bones and darkness.
Heat is a hyena, which exists to harrass and nip at your Achilles tendon. All the while laughing its madness into your soul...
Heat is a demon, spawned of hellfire, steeped in its terrible ugliness...
The nightmare growth of cancer on the will and spirit...
Heat lives.
Heat breathes.
Heat kills.
Jun 22, 2017
Jun 22, 2017 at 1:03 AM UTC
Stuck indoors but I saw brass singing bowls, an inverted bell and a wooden striker.
The sorrow reflects in drops like water in the sunlight,
love written in tablets made of stone.
We find the stone from quarries,
we find calm in that stone.
And then we write in the tablets to share that calm.
The elements burn: water, earth, air, space and fire. Magnetic fields switch,
love in resistance.
The cormorant fishes with a metal ring around its neck.
The fish that escaped the cormorant don’t swim in the shallows.
“At dawn
fish that have escaped the cormorants
swim in shallows.”
Safe from the Cormorants by
Buson, Japanese haiku poet.
Apr 29, 2021
Apr 29, 2021 at 2:34 PM UTC