"ferryboats" poems
The smoke stacks that line the waterfront be like giant joints puffing thoughts of her into air embalmed by hundreds of rainy days
That slow burn, against the icy bay and the barges that carry their loads through them
This corner of the world gets six hours of daylight, tops
Greys seared by neon, smoke and clouds and fog produced as one
continuous substance
There's a pleasant blurryness here
floating amid the buoys and the docked ferryboats,
In the way the monorails glide above toward a 1960s dream of the space age through an Amazonian jungle of glass and cranes
in harmony with the clouds sailing overhead
Here is where you go to let off steam deferred, where you ride trains through a kind of dark that arrives early, stays up late
as shadows wander across the gum covered walls of Post Alley
like ghosts made of espresso mist
freed from lit joints protruding from the skyline
to a high beneath starless heaven
Resting into the glow of that harbor
against thoughts of her that cloud the view of the sea.
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 4:33 PM UTC
The bay is subsumed
By almost thunderstorm
Heather and slate
The sun shines on the pale city
The city shines white
Across the bay
And the ferryboats
Bright dots
Disappear in the devouring rain
Soft from where I stand
But there are spots of light
That play on the hills
And the water
And the land enfolds the bay
Nestling the city on either side
It is beautiful as if from above
And a plane crosses the sky
The churning clouds, white and blue
And vanishes behind the gray
Aug 15, 2011
Aug 15, 2011 at 7:50 PM UTC
I'm in love with summer.
Standstill air,
dandelions drifting
the weight of the sky
pressing white heat.
Cold, waves beating the shore,
ceaselessly into the past,
of when I was drowned
in your dreams.
I'm in love with autumn.
Crisp air,
Nudging leaves off gnarly oaks
and tall, regal cedars.
Lost in the anagram of colors,
I see fire,
I see blood red.
I see a Faustian bargain
but we won.
I'm in love with winter.
The biting cold in my fingertips,
the solitude of confinement,
walls of windows show snow
that blankets every edge.
And the birds that have left,
to warmer places.
Opportunity, that's what you said.
And your bags, and you,
were gone in the blowing snow.
I'm in love with the spring.
The clear blue waters,
and ferryboats beating against the current,
the gardens bursting into light,
the promise of growth and
of future
and of hope.
but, I guess, we weren't meant to grow old.
And the sight of spring flowers
and trees with bright green buds,
makes me sick to my stomach.
I am in hate with the spring.
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 12:54 PM UTC
*Do you see the caricatures neath the full moon pines
The ghost of General McIntosh , spirits of Creek hunters along
the river brush
Old Timers whittling song flutes from bottom cane
Farrier's shoeing mules , work horses straining at the
crack of the whip , ferryboats treading shoals across the
foggy Flint
The voices of children in one room schoolhouses
The rousing , morning bell of little towns , the clap
of field wagons
A fiddler sawing a piedmont 'Rag'
The rustle of picking field peas with Croaker bags*
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 21, 2016 at 7:31 PM UTC