Latest New Cafe Slam Poem
the words:
lichen, forfeiture, nest, bank, stars, hymnal, tender, protest,
same, clay, sea, lullaby
the poem:
***********going home***********
seaweed clings to the tide-exposed piling
like thin lichen grasps the cedar bark on shore
I breath them both: the ozone water dried salt
And the loam rich pine perfume and cannot
imagine a forfeiture of either.
So here I make my nest in this third borrowed land
on the banks of the Puget Sound where mountains
shine clear as stars on every side of these past
thirty years and the green land cuts through the
blue water sky like lush words in a hymnal. . .
my hymnal, now.
Under not so tender a protest I left
first the atlantic shores where I was birthed
and then the pacific clime where I grew to
twenty-something in the same
Circumstance of geographical fostering
always wondering, where is home?
[The poet says you cannot go home again
and I think, but what about the many
who cannot rightly claim a place to even
TRY that return journey?]
I move forward, always, into new lands, uncharted.
At fifty something I am here, arrived
in the slick ancient clay of all ocean beds,
cradled in the sea, my sea: atlantic, pacific,
irish, carribean, and even once the great salt lake.
The water sings the lullabye I remember; it rolls in my veins.
lichen, forfeiture, nest, bank, stars, hymnal, tender, protest,
same, clay, sea, lullaby
the poem:
***********going home***********
seaweed clings to the tide-exposed piling
like thin lichen grasps the cedar bark on shore
I breath them both: the ozone water dried salt
And the loam rich pine perfume and cannot
imagine a forfeiture of either.
So here I make my nest in this third borrowed land
on the banks of the Puget Sound where mountains
shine clear as stars on every side of these past
thirty years and the green land cuts through the
blue water sky like lush words in a hymnal. . .
my hymnal, now.
Under not so tender a protest I left
first the atlantic shores where I was birthed
and then the pacific clime where I grew to
twenty-something in the same
Circumstance of geographical fostering
always wondering, where is home?
[The poet says you cannot go home again
and I think, but what about the many
who cannot rightly claim a place to even
TRY that return journey?]
I move forward, always, into new lands, uncharted.
At fifty something I am here, arrived
in the slick ancient clay of all ocean beds,
cradled in the sea, my sea: atlantic, pacific,
irish, carribean, and even once the great salt lake.
The water sings the lullabye I remember; it rolls in my veins.