Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Tuesday Poem: previously appeared in The Syracuse Record in 2003


Ode to the Moon Snail

Unlikely predator!
In that gleaming whorled shell,
its spiraled white 
setting tide pools alight,
agleam. O dance.
O trance of hungry 
chalky nebula!

O languorous taster,
with full and flexible 
tongue extended 
in a sensual 
narrowing gyre.
O unsuspecting quahog
stuck in sea bed mire!

What salty tide is this 
that turns seduction fierce 
enough to mount and pierce 
such horny shell ?

How does such glistening 
undulant meat
harden into drill bit ?

Purity of clammy 
darkness, suddenly 
inhabited by two.
What's a clam to do?

Ravished by the moon itself.
O secret wooings!
Delicious liquefaction!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Tuesday Poem: another one previously published by Fox Chase Review in 2009


A Black Plastic Bag Is Rising

on the wind, like a raven
riding an updraft,
a wingless bird
without hope
of ever gliding
its way back down.

It billows and swells,
now round as a fist
raised at the heavens,
then thinly, it twists
and changes shape,
becomes a moth unfurling
from the chrysalis.

And this makes me ponder
the dark smudge of the soul
as it leaves the body,
released all at once from gravity.

But this is the opposite of a soul --
a polymer stretched and shaped
for single use, and then turned into refuse,
bearing our fingerprints into the world,
our carrying urge made
manifest, run amok,
an indestructible
piece of flotsam.
They’re everywhere.

I look out my window,
and see a land-locked jellyfish
wending its way through the city,
harpy, black spot, blight,
omen, burning tire, bit of midnight,
flake of ash from a funeral pyre.

One of millions.
And where, oh where will it light?