Thursday, April 17, 2014

Sea Glass Poem for reading at the Main Library in Ft. Lauderdale


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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