Saturday, April 10, 2010

Cape Ann Dreamlight




Fishing Fleet in Port




I dream a sea awash in ships:

Irish leather-skins,

Wooden dories,

Yankee whalers.

A transatlantic coffin ship,

Irish leather skins

Packed in human humidity

And rats

Within.


Bright white and blue

Gloucester trawler’s huffing funnel,

Smiling crew,

Hanging metal nets

Shine, anticipating.

Leather skins stand at the rail,

Set in sepia tone,

Eternally waving goodbye.


Ghost-driven, rust-eaten,

Trawler risen from the deep,

Her crew, no longer smiling, sleep

A deep, amniotic sleep

Unknown to air-dwellers.


I dream a sea awash in ships

Crossing, passing, intersecting,

Leaving foamy traces in their wakes.


I am sand and sea-foam.

I once clung to pilings

In stinking Queenstown harbor.

A passing wave caught me

And carried me to America,

Depositing me on the shore,

A seed asleep in the sand.


It is said that nothing will grow in sand

But I did.

And though it is said that we are dust

And to dust we shall return,

I am sand and sea-foam.

I will return to the sand.




***************


With thanks to Lime for her encouragement.


Cricket



9 comments:

Buck said...

Nice, Cricket. Very nice.

lime said...

i'm glad a few words of praise could bring this out into the light for more to enjoy. thank you for being willing to share it at my place in the first place. this really is a marvelous bit of writing that leaves me just as breathless on subsequent readings as on the first.

Hilary said...

Ah.. very nicely done. You paint quite the scene with your words.

Andy said...

Nicely done, indeed.

Suldog said...

Truly, a superb bit of writing, my swell pal. Well done!

ethelmaepotter! said...

Stopping by to say thanks for visiting my blog.

Such beautiful prose...your imagery is fantastic...I can see the trawler, I can smell the sea, I can feel the desolation.

Magnificent!

Dianne said...

I love the last verse, it holds such a joyful and hopeful image

Land of shimp said...

Nicely done, Cricket :-) I have a terrible habit, my mind wanders whenever I read poetry, and I create images in my head to go with the words.

So it is unfortunate that Gloucester made me think of Richard III and now I've got this rather hilarious vision in my head of King Richard, clinging to the hull of a ship, sneering about kingdoms and horses.

Totally unrelated to your poem, which is entirely lovely, but evidently my brain insists on creating puppet shows within it.

Ananda girl said...

Beautiful Cricket. Just beautiful.