Here is the poem I read with many other delightful poets, including Anastasia Clark and Jane Glasser at last night's reading at the Main Library in Ft. Lauderdale
Corsica, 1985
It’s Bastille
Day in the Corsican port of Macinaggio
in the
municipality of Rogliano, Haute Corse,
and the island
summer heat propels us seaward to sail
the Tyrrhenian
toward the inviting Finnochiarola Islet
where we dive
into crystal waters, swim and bask
beneath a
fantasy sun in a Hollywood painted sky,
a mélange, a
make-believe rainbow set, too beautiful to be real.
On the late
afternoon ride back to port I fling into the cobalt ocean—
now mimicking
the changed splattered sky—
a corked sea-green
wine bottle into which I’ve placed
a love note and
musings of the day’s remembrances.
At dusk, we
dance in the streets to wild, thrumming music,
sip rosé wine
we pour from a five-liter brown jug.
At night
topside of The Lady Drifter we watch fireworks
ignite the
heavens with purple pinwheels, cream-colored
cartwheels,
Cezanne-sketched Catherine wheels.
Years later on
a Florida beach by the Hillsboro Inlet
nesting places
for sea turtles upwards of the beach
are cordoned
off among creeper-crawler sea grape and white-
throated wild
lavender flora resembling morning glories.
A sea-smoothed,
palm-sized piece of green glass catches the sunlight
and I’m
spellbound, my mind mesmerized in an out of control
spin of
narration: inventing, creating, imagining a story
about the
bottle I threw overboard as an offering to Corsican
mermaids and
sailors not lucky enough to purchase
a baby’s caul
as a protective veil against drowning.
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