I wrote these two poems in Uruguay in 2011 several months after my mother's death on her 81st birthday. The poems were first published in Angle Poetry Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1, Summer 2012, and subsequently in my second full-length collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis, 2014).
Why did I choose Achelois for my second poem? Click HERE to find out. The end-rhyme of "The Dawning" also provides a clue.
God-willing, in ten days I'll be back in my home by the South Atlantic.
Two Poems of the Sea
I.
The Dawning
The sea, relentless in her give-and-take,
her rising, falling waves that seem to make
amends in silence just before they break
ashore, reflects the instant I awake —
a moment of reprieve, when every snake
I realize is fantasy or fake;
when life’s a bowl of cherries. Piece of cake.
(There must have been
some terrible mistake . . .)
And then the crash. The undertow. The ache.
II.
To a Minor
Goddess
Wave on wave all
heaving and arch and spillage;
blue and green and
grey overlaid with silver.
Christmas Day — my
saviour the
Triumph. Surrender.
All my gods have
failed me, yet Achelois,
you have watched me
wavering in the billows;
you have heard me
weeping the wail of seagulls,
and you have answered:
Do not look for eyes in the dancing
diamonds;
do not long for lullabies in the breakers;
do not lend more tears to the salt of
oceans’
flotsam and jetsam.
Listen for the crash. See the string of
seafoam
lace that hems the sand with a hush and
whisper.
Silence. Nothing. Everything.
Constellations.
Guardian
angels.
