.
That grey droning note
I’ve heard every dusk
Neither owl nor foghorn
But similar to both
The low fluted “day-is-done”
Of some unknown warbler
Atonally breathy memo
Of universal mysterioso
Tucks misty roses away
In the dark’s soft envelope
Safe under a lion’s paw
Of starry numerology
Whose silver figures
Flecked by receding surf
Otherwise float unfathomed
Into the liquid night air
Receding surf, Pacific Palisades: photo by Downtowngal, 2009
7 comments:
The whole ocean is only a click away.
It's been too long since I've been near the ocean. The ocean at the dusk of a summer day. There is a simple, whimsical essence to the poem that makes me breathe it in, wanting to be there. Beautiful.
Ray, I know what you mean. From where I am now it's just close enough to be out of reach. If I stagger up the hill a bit I can see it. When the wind blows off it, I suppose I can breathe it. Mixed with the urban air.
But this poem was written some time ago out in West Marin where we were literally stuck out into the Pacific on a shelf of rock that extended into Duxbury Reef, nothing urban about it, and the smell and sounds of the ocean were constantly and immediately in the air. The poem reflects in its way a certain shimmering light I remember from that place and time.
I could almost smell the salt in the air when I saw the picture. I miss the ocean. I have not seen it in the flesh for over five years now...
'Safe under a lion’s paw
Of starry numerology'
hmmmm... beautiful and enigmatic...
This is just splendid. I will teach this to my daughter, who loves the ocean.
Many thanks, Curtis. The ocean would seem to present a superior curriculum always, as well as an abiding object of wonder and contemplation.
No longer experiencing its constant presence brings a sense of absence and loss, felt deeply in the soul.
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