"inlet" poems
Sailboat on a purple sea
Yellow skies are all she sees
Lonely Captain at the helm
Lord o’er all her ocean realm.
Sailboat on a purple sea
Sailing through Eternity
The yellow skies reveal her ardor
Searching for inlet or harbor.
Where she can safely drop her anchor
Without hostility or rancor
Stay forever, or a day
If on a whim she sails away.
To search again for other shores
Unmindful of the ocean’s mores.
Sometimes storms impede her course
Fill her journey with remorse
Thunder sounds a deaf’ning roar
Through driving rain, can’t see the shore
Lightning bolts around her flash
As if to call the Captain brash
For thinking that she has control
Over purple ocean’s vitriol.
If ever she regrets her plight
When yellow skies turn dark at night
And midnight storms have lead to loss
She rights the ship and bears the cross
And waits for morning dawn to break
Sun through last night’s rain will make
A rainbow reaching far away
Certainly it will show the way
To steer her sailboat that day.
Sailboat on a purple sea
Yellow skies are all she sees
Buoyant Captain at the helm
Lord o’er all her ocean realm.
PwL 04/21/15
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 10:56 PM UTC
Now it's time to play. Nobody says,
like they used to, but in my bones
the desire overwhelms me. "Write!
Make a poem," say the bones.
The inlet will come first. It always does.
Water calls urgently, "egret." The waterbird
that moves elastically over the surface
making everything focus soon or late.
Now my hand enters. It always does.
It gives the bones reason to observe.
It makes the egret the finest thing in sight
and the water intelligent north of here.
Water is genius because it is interconnected.
Drop south knows drop north.
But the bones will lose their joy
if the bird overwhelms the old playground.
by Landis EVERSON
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 1:41 AM UTC
I have sailed the River of Yellow Flowers,
Borne by the channel of a green stream,
Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains
On a journey of less than thirty miles....
Rapids hum over heaped rocks;
But where light grows dim in the thick pines,
The surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns
And weeds are lush along the banks.
...Down in my heart I have always been as pure
As this limpid water is....
Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock
And to cast a fishing-line forever!
2.9k
Annapolis (DDH 265)
decommissioned warcraft
clean severed lines
steam gusts belt
from a cavernous shell
the ghost ship settles
on a drift ridge
perfect tide rhythm
on a salt washed shore
calming nuance
in passive time
*weaving through
channels and crest waves*
white sands warming
at a high point
beyond the breakers
and porteau pins
gazers and dreamers
(and sleepy fiords)
rest softly up the straight
froth folds skim and linger
on the wide eyed
wanderers of the sound
cove seals settle
at the inlet
their symphonies
backing on the
bowen brigade
ripples and
patch makers
hold sheets to the wind
markgraf lines
find electric blue sky
stealth shadows
haunt the seascape
the dragon fly hovers
in fits and starts
Jun 11, 2017
Jun 11, 2017 at 11:15 AM UTC
moving inland far away from
the coast temptation doth bring
deeper in land the head seems consumed by everything
nearing the coast it's the heart that sings
though inland, my love, you will find me
away from the bogs or the shoals o' herring
holding you at bay with *****
keeping me next to me
wanting tomorrow to be the better day
my mind, an island for tromping shores
different from desert sands
when the tide of your concern reprimands
on this island the shells
are smaller and there are no dollars,
the sea, a shrunken plastic expanse of
syringes and lip balm containers,
soft fluid-filled bodies turned into
sopping brown-bag skeletons,
revenges
of modern life.
there is a rivulet further up shore
do you feel it?
follow the inlet wind
near a candescent pond
there is a house
open the door
if you fall in
a home can be found.
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 1:37 AM UTC
Meadow Fresh
Our fuel for life,
Redzenergy
and the 500mL V
“William, William
stay where I can see you ok”
Stop (neighbourhood watch patrols operating)
In here
Enter the fusion
Stay clear of the fire
Sprinkler inlet
Open
a Woman’s day
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 6:02 AM UTC
This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in a Brooklyn boarding house,
went with him to Puerto Rico
bore three more children, lost
her second husband, lived hard
for eight years in St. Thomas,
Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed
the oldest son to New York,
lost her daughter, lost her “baby,”
seized the two boys of
the oldest son by the second marriage
mothered them—they being
motherless—fought for them
against the other grandmother
and the aunts, brought them here
summer after summer, defended
herself here against thieves,
storms, sun, fire,
against flies, against girls
that came smelling about, against
drought, against weeds, storm-tides,
neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,
against the weakness of her own hands,
against the growing strength of
the boys, against wind, against
the stones, against trespassers,
against rents, against her own mind.
She grubbed this earth with her own hands,
domineered over this grass plot,
blackguarded her oldest son
into buying it, lived here fifteen years,
attained a final loneliness and—
If you can bring nothing to this place
but your carcass, keep out.
2.4k
Each day is drowned in frigid waters.
Never able to dock against real land.
Little bubbles ripple to the surface of the ill-fated.
Riptides of hate and disgust slam the high towers of this mighty hull.
The icy cluster plunges into the depth of our core.
Defiantly this mighty bow of ours shrieks from its deathly hollows.
As if some ghostly being is wailing it's final departure to the sea.
Monotonous overtones creak inside this inlet;
as life and death flood to it's harmony.
Brimming with animosity and subjugation.
The majestic's heart yearns for land one last time.
Our innards displayed,
as our two halves fatally sink to their final depths.
Never reaching our idol port.
Never finding what was Solely ours to find.
A sinking Ship.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 7:04 AM UTC
In the warmth of a summer sunset
I sat idle on the sea shore
Looking at the grey enormity
That heaved and swelled in turn
As I looked on, the breakers rose high
Thundering sea waves dashed
And crashed over the boulders
Before me was the wild brutality of the sea!
Though at times she is calm and windless,
A smoldering volcano lies beneath her surface
I sat away from the crowd
In a cool squire of quiet
Inhaling the briny air
And enjoying the foam and spray
My mind then was light as that of a child
That plays on the sea shore, making sand castles
I watched small boats carrying men
They were heading towards the Casino
Moored in the inlet of the sea
I felt those men were like flies lured by the flame
They come either to perish or to prosper
Most of them go back with empty wallets
Very few fortunate to splurge in money newly amassed
My eyes stretched far into the horizon
Bound by a vault of azure sky
Swallows were circling beneath tangled clouds
The tall masts of ships could be seen at a distance
I watched waves taking the shape of curving scrolls
Dolphins were seen leaping over the waters
And ever growing ripples drifted and strayed
As the fabric of blue got continuously shredded
For fun I scribbled my name on the sands
But a wave came crashing against the shore
And the very next moment washed it away
Was it here or there, I had scrawled my signature
I don’t know. It has vanished leaving no trace
Suddenly from a child, I grew into a sage
How transient is man’s life on Earth
How very tiny we are
Set against the vastness of the sea
In the wide expanse of life, as on a sea shore
We scribble our names to stay
But Alas! Some unknown hands wipe them away
It dawned on me that with time’s ceaseless flow
The world will continue to speed away
Without you or me
Leaving no memorials behind!
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 11:41 PM UTC
At midnight, out on the cobblestones
There’s the sound of rolling wheels,
And a shadow cast on a window pane
From the road outside, it steals,
A wagon, black in its livery,
And pulled by a single horse,
As black as the heart of the man that steers,
Whipped up from the watercourse.
From down in a tiny inlet, deep
Enough for a man of war,
A French corvette is lying, waiting,
Just metres away from shore,
It carried a cargo of brandy, wine,
And cases full of tea,
Smuggled into the tiny cove
Its goods all duty free.
Now it’s waiting upon the tide
To turn the ship around,
Its cargo gone in the wagon now,
Headed for higher ground,
And then the galloping hoofbeats echo
Over the cobblestones,
The crack of a couple of pistols and
The air is filled with groans.
The horse breaks free of its halter and
The wagon rolls back down,
It’s shadow passing my window pane
A second time around,
It rolls back into the harbour while
I hear the boom of guns,
Firing from the French Corvette
As it hoists its sail, and runs.
Once a year on the fifth of June
And late into the night,
Whenever the moon is lying low
And casting down its light,
I see the shadows and hear the sounds
From that deadly time of yore,
As the ghostly French Corvette departs
And sails from the ghostly shore.
And glistening out on the cobblestones
There’s a dampness, looks like mud,
That dissipates in an hour or two,
A pool of the smuggler’s blood,
I dare not go to the window, look,
Or even open the door,
In case I’m carried away by them
From two hundred years before.
David Lewis Paget
Dec 7, 2017
Dec 7, 2017 at 1:51 AM UTC
"You are my ocean"
You said.
Enclosed, unclothe me each chance you get.
We played pass with the waves, shore to shore, along the inlet.
And yet, as far as it was, you felt my breath up and down your neck.
My words whispered through your head, wishing you close.
But the tide ran up.
And I drowned instead.
"Its tough luck, love . Take what you get."
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 3:35 AM UTC
Upon the banks
Of this little island inlet
The waxing light of sol's solace
Blanketed the horizon
For mile after mile
Casting a cool warm glow
Like a candle in winter
Slowly waning at the stars
Descent
When at its apex
The water began to shimmer
Ruffling our image into bright
Ripples
Replaying our landscape
And our facade
Into countless ruminations
Of the single second
That marked twilight's ascent
This reflected memory remembered
In the twinkling sky
At night
Dec 26, 2016
Dec 26, 2016 at 6:46 PM UTC
Between the hours of twelve and one
sleep comes upon my head
and should I not doze off outright
I make prepared for bed
and every night I do the same
with flossed and brushèd teeth
the coffee *** is timed to brew,
sleep setting on T.V.
There's little more a man could do
inside so small a space
with front door locked, and lights turned out
I tend to end my days.
Yet there's one thing I leave unchecked
and do so knowingly:
The Peephole in my ten'ment door
does seem to stare at me.
But never shall I look again,
not through that small inlet,
because one fateful night I did,
and now I can't forget.
It was a night without a mark
to make it stand apart—
I thought about the coming day
while walking through the dark.
And without thought, I stole a glance
outside onto the street
and through the peephole, there it stood
just staring right at me.
If somehow it could sense my gaze,
I really could not say—
with heart in mouth, I held my breath
and tried to slink away.
I crept in bed and pulled the sheets
around my trembling frame
and sat upright, until the night
did give way to the day.
A knock upon my door at nine
aroused me from my state
"Delivery!" a voice called out—
no longer could I wait.
I sprang from bed, my nightclothes on
and toward the door I ran
and without looking, opened
hoping I would see a friend.
Instead I looked around in shock,
for nobody was there—
no package left upon my stoop,
and silence in the air.
And as I went to close the door,
a wind began to blow,
a wind that whispered secrets that
no man should ever know.
I went inside, and horrified,
I knew I'd paid a toll,
and nevermore could I feel safe
to look from my peephole.
Aug 8, 2010
Aug 8, 2010 at 5:24 PM UTC
blob of mercury
flat level
with boats
sunk up to
gunnels
mirrored images
the colour red
into the silver
shining
shapes of shore
buildings upside
down
half way along
running
our inlet
singular calls
pierce the deafness
in this morn
of a man
going insane
with
sleepless
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
The beginning of this
Break.
–Down
At its foundation
Fulfilling and self-reflective, and
Rousing and neurotic and bright
And perilous
–a fever-dream
¬¬¬
Shadows that have stopped forming,
Dead
All
The mornings are dead
The passion is dead
The feeling of the back of my neck –tiny hairs
All
Dead
That human side has halted
The “I-feel-like-a-pussy-but-” thoughts, gone
All dreams
All barren, with less than profound meaning
******* dead, behind the wheel.
Car trapped
Inside of a sad self-absorption
A frozen-inlet, a fissure in the glass-jar
Road paved with the litter of the late
Night, bug-eyed witless carbon copy Phish fan
Grave yard shift –stick worn-down-brain
Lazily-littered, empty-shell of a
Bottle flung, down to the pavement
Down, into the gutter
Down, into sewer
Which sweeps, down into the **** Heavens
And sits
Down, endlessly
Dreaming only to return
Into life
The insanity
The heartbreak
The fears
The passions
The talent
The jokes
The sickness
The *******
Where it all starts
Where it all eventually sleeps
Where all of this **** came full circle
Where the mind can return
Where the body can lay,
Down
At the beginning of this.
Break.
–Down
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC
I watch the harbor through the falling snow
the sky and sea form one vast, gray tableau
the sun is nothing but a weak, background glow
the scene draws me, as if hypnotically.
Five mile’s lighthouse warnings go unvoiced
its strobes not lashing out, so what’s its point
it stands majestically but disappoints
replaced electronically
A tiny lobster boat makes its landward way
towards the inlet from the wider channel bay
a powdery blizzard is underway
which melts into the mirror sea.
Ospreys still hunt round the lobsterman's pride
snowflakes stain them as they soar and glide
other seabirds huddle side by side
shivering and crowing lividly.
Through the narrows the lonely boat steams
past icy Luddington Rock and East Breakwater's breech
its berths and moorings, within minutes reach
and sadly, it’s time for me to leave.
.
.
Songs for this:
Far Far Away (Charles Tone Mix) [feat. Brenda Boykin] by Tape Five
Nobody by Mitski
Feb 15, 2025
Feb 15, 2025 at 1:42 PM UTC
Nights, we take the boat out
paddle our way green through water
swum by inlet waves, full moon apace
shadowy, ancient tribal faced
lose all trace of the shore, black
but for phosphorescence
glowing, trailing from the oars
a haunting ghostly art
green and breathing, disappearing
back into darkness, swallowed
by black water, by night
strange this death,
this rebirth and breath
felt in each and every moment.
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 2:50 PM UTC
we frantic
for secretive places
a cave inlet, dim fire,
where we could claw
each other to pieces
like animals
love a distant scent,
all sweet conversation
make hunting spears
no word is meant
who preys whom
what brings us here
primitive echoes
assail our skins
habitual betrayers
ours, yours, bodies
some lurking thirst
of centuries digs its
claws into flesh
like animals
love a distant scent...
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 6:06 AM UTC
Blessed are the poorly, for theirs is the kingdom of mudflats
The dispirited streak turgid waters
sinuously, through unsettled feelings
in the wake of boats shedding
filaments of fuel,
sheen on a turbid infusion
and the cordgrass nods a resilience
or an apathy as the silt settles
on their Piscean gleam
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see a salted heaven
Angelic Menhaden of the Atlantic,
are silvery stretches of scale,
dulled in death under a festering sun
and the retreating tide of dying waters
brined in ocean, freshwater spirited
to secret spaces, some dammed crevasse,
now tumultuous fate in a salted heaven
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled
At the Tabgha of this intertidal palette
Cattails whisper beatitudes
latched onto the tails of wind gusts
and the plovers descended
in a litany of bird song
amassed like the manna
trailing tidal waters
as the sea swallows herself.
Blessed are the herons, the mallards,
the geese. Time is measured
in the passage of fish that
cycle themselves through the innards of birds
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the rocks
The meek Menhaden, leaped
onto the rocks that hemmed the inlet,
escaping the hungry habits of herons.
They inherited Earth in agony
pounding a rocky surface,
but the air I swim, had no water.
I prodded these Menhaden of the Rock
to the fringe of retreating tides,
and they leaped to die once more
to breathe water that had no air
Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted
Blessed is the discomfiture
of my brackish tears
that streak marsh faces
as fish struggle out of dead water.
I take comfort I don't inhabit
tainted places or do I take comfort,
all places are the tint of poison,
the gleam of a genesis of sorrow
Jun 6, 2021
Jun 6, 2021 at 3:36 PM UTC
on a cool morning
i meandered by the shore
the crisp salt air was pungent
as the first rays touched the bay
with dazzling reflections
the deep thrum of a tugboat
sounded across the inlet
from within a low fogbank
and ravens clacked and cackled
high up in the dark forest
beneath the steep, sawtooth peaks
i stopped then and looking down
saw small brown ***** scuttling
across the shell littered beach
fleeing a giant
Sep 21, 2015
Sep 21, 2015 at 1:24 PM UTC
we sink half an inch every year
"soon, we'll be up to our ears
in water"
not a creature of fury, just of habit
the moon pulls her to churning, to crashing.
hotter water temper tantrums
rush the brine into our basements
soaking scrapbooks in salt
until it crystallizes faces
and yet i cannot blame the marsh
for reclaiming what was never ours
and taking even what was as penance.
but i refuse to condemn us
for shaping shorelines into lives
because things are so much clearer
when they turn with the tides.
we’ll grow gills in time,
we have to.
the ones who stay on land
could never handle shifting sands
don’t know we cling onto the inlet
with white-knuckled hands.
they never grew from buried roots,
seeds are just flotsam in the sea
so they’ll call Frank O’Toole crazy
when he can’t bring himself to leave.
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 10:11 PM UTC
“I believe I’m gratified to have loved her,
If not where would my heart have been,
My eyes were radiated by this naiad,
Regalia she has given will last ever ageless,
To have been near her held her hand,
Brushed my fingers through her hair,
Listened to her incentive ways she had,
Given to me before she had gone faultily,
Rivers flow as wind carry life’s ballad inlet,
Leading me deep into the paradise I longed for,
Overwhelming protecting me from world afar,
Strong caring is what keeps our souls as one,
It’s an obsession the way we let ardor consume us,
In her eyes I found new visions have been revealed,
As the sea forgets in its furore lading aboard,
No rest from travels it is my libation for memoir,
World of the deep fell into darkness of nets,
I would have liked my naiad by my side,
I imagine that my heart palpitating sadness,
If I were to pique the naiad would it make all well,
I shall never KNOW”
By Andrew Guzaldo 10/07/2018 ©
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 3:21 PM UTC
Linking the ritual chronology of the past few days in accordance with 'The Boy's' 21st birthday. No longer a boy, but not quite a man, but unsure if that was the ambition at all. Linking the rites of spring with the rites of summer, endless summer, indian summer, endless ****** no longer sure, were we ever, and did we ever want to be?
The seasonal threshold coupling the brutality of summer freedom. All those years on the bench in systemic education, waiting, counting the days until the breakout of summer, the breakout of the nation-wide epidemic of drips of sweat rolling down foreheads, cars racing up and down the highway going anywhere but home, if only for a few minuscule hours of freedom. Not really knowing what to do; the only certain knowledge; that doing anything is better than doing something, whatever that means.
Proud proletarian patriot, hating with every inch the structure and the scaffold, the zephyr swishing and swooshing over the surface of the storefront, while the air condition whirrs away, in a little town on a little island in a massive inlet in a vast sea, tossing and twisting, raging and blistering with the toils of work, throwing rhetorical fists in the air like-you-just-don't-care, with drops of Digital Ink. –with that strange symbiotic disharmony that emits from the boy's fingers, fuelled with every every-day stimulant, caffeine, nicotine, THC; Trembling Hallucinogenic Creation. The ongoing tremble of uncertain fingers, searching for a certain certainty he knows he'll never see.
And therein lies the tragedy
But also the beauty.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 8:49 AM UTC