an ocean that has asked to sail away
Today's poem:
Rising dream tide
~Bob Hicok
Three times she bit the Atlantic but only once barked at thunder.
Lonely thunder and now her teeth-marks float to sea.
This is her first trip to how Ocracoke Island smells
and the ocean, I'll count my encounters
with the wide, ineffable appetite as I go to bed,
with the factory of liquid fold and unfold,
there was Kittery in the morning and the tent-eating tide,
the naked bland Greek crotches of Sfakia.
My dog is realizing she doesn't like salt water, I
that a spiritual person could see angels in white winged waves,
just as another might think of beer. Drunken angels abound.
I had an actual dream last night, not a, to loosen
the imaginative stops, I need to invite Carl Jung into the poem
kind of dream, but my father and I and other men
tried to save a crop that was probably just suburban
crewcut lawn grass. I didn't know what to do
and bleated questions until my father said that asking was rude.
Which is when I tried to kill him, kill the idea
that to not know but want to, that to ask,
to form the voice into waves flowing out from mind, was wrong,
and couldn't kill him because when I tried to lift
so I could smash him down, he was heavy as Icarus falling
and I woke to the sense of a shape breathing the darkness
of the room. I drove eleven hours to remember
only the second dream in my life. A few feet to my right,
a ghost crab pitches sand from a hole, its eyes
on stalks above its sideways life. Sanderlings
skitter wet sand and with their long bills, probe
for small crustaceans, I dug one out yesterday
as water trickled home, sunlight ballrooming
on its shattering surface, the creature was white
and writhed, the size of what I pick from my navel
at the end of the day. My first thought was that I needed
a name, a sound to wrap around the image, to which I'd attach
other breaths, breaths of how it lives and what it eats,
and immediately wanted to know nothing
except how it felt on my skin, the smallest kiss
to ever cross my fingerprint. Eleven hours
to close my eyes and have them turn around.
At this rate, I'll recall one more dream before I die.
In the distance, black triangles surface and submerge,
dolphins crossing the horizon like the teeth
of a saw cutting this ocean from an ocean that has asked
to sail away.
***
Here's a link to a lovely piece of Steve/Bucky fanart (nsfw). *happy sigh*
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/564075.html.
people have commented there.
Rising dream tide
~Bob Hicok
Three times she bit the Atlantic but only once barked at thunder.
Lonely thunder and now her teeth-marks float to sea.
This is her first trip to how Ocracoke Island smells
and the ocean, I'll count my encounters
with the wide, ineffable appetite as I go to bed,
with the factory of liquid fold and unfold,
there was Kittery in the morning and the tent-eating tide,
the naked bland Greek crotches of Sfakia.
My dog is realizing she doesn't like salt water, I
that a spiritual person could see angels in white winged waves,
just as another might think of beer. Drunken angels abound.
I had an actual dream last night, not a, to loosen
the imaginative stops, I need to invite Carl Jung into the poem
kind of dream, but my father and I and other men
tried to save a crop that was probably just suburban
crewcut lawn grass. I didn't know what to do
and bleated questions until my father said that asking was rude.
Which is when I tried to kill him, kill the idea
that to not know but want to, that to ask,
to form the voice into waves flowing out from mind, was wrong,
and couldn't kill him because when I tried to lift
so I could smash him down, he was heavy as Icarus falling
and I woke to the sense of a shape breathing the darkness
of the room. I drove eleven hours to remember
only the second dream in my life. A few feet to my right,
a ghost crab pitches sand from a hole, its eyes
on stalks above its sideways life. Sanderlings
skitter wet sand and with their long bills, probe
for small crustaceans, I dug one out yesterday
as water trickled home, sunlight ballrooming
on its shattering surface, the creature was white
and writhed, the size of what I pick from my navel
at the end of the day. My first thought was that I needed
a name, a sound to wrap around the image, to which I'd attach
other breaths, breaths of how it lives and what it eats,
and immediately wanted to know nothing
except how it felt on my skin, the smallest kiss
to ever cross my fingerprint. Eleven hours
to close my eyes and have them turn around.
At this rate, I'll recall one more dream before I die.
In the distance, black triangles surface and submerge,
dolphins crossing the horizon like the teeth
of a saw cutting this ocean from an ocean that has asked
to sail away.
***
Here's a link to a lovely piece of Steve/Bucky fanart (nsfw). *happy sigh*
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/564075.html.
people have commented there.