Sunrise

Sunrise
Sunrise on Sunset Beach

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Boothbay Gray


Boothbay Harbor, Maine
July 12, 2013

If you hold a quiet pose

ankle deep in shallow water
soles set to fine sand

rooted into rising tide
that carved the coves
and coast of Maine,

perhaps you’ll feel a touch of grace
washed in warm midsummer
sun and bathed in midday
joy-song of brother thrush.

If you hold as tiny crablettes
scuttle-crawl across your feet
and minnows clean your wrinkled toes,
perhaps you’ll catch the seaweed sway 
to sister moon and lapping wave.

And if you chance to hold your ground
with thighs immersed beneath the tide,
perhaps your pulse will realign,
your breath reset to offshore breeze,
your mind at peace with mother sea.

Perhaps you’ll find your soul
submerged within the one eternal
moment, calm as the evening
osprey, who holds a quiet pose

on a pole with a view
to watch the daylight
slowly fade, his world

dissolve in shades of gray
and unobserved, to fly away

as silence fills the fog-bound night.

Boothbay Harbor, Maine



Sunday, July 7, 2013

An Ode to Aralee


On the passing of Aralee Strange, founder and host 
of the Athens Word of Mouth open poetry community,
June 15, 2013 at her home, "Timberdance"

Athens, Georgia
July 3, 2013; revised June 28 2015

In some place primeval
the priestess holds court 
where rhythms take form 

your spirit’s reborn  
as sirens sing in sotto voce
the Sibyl raves a praise to Gaia, 

long-mute furies chant 
in tongues, and fiery nuns 
rap truth to knaves. None

can name the kind of faith 
that rocked your soul 
in the bosom of Timberdance, 

but a warm spring bathed 
your late years, submerging self 
to nurture words in perfect strangers. 

It’s just the broken way 
of things that what we love 
will leave too soon. 

Authentic poets never die, 
they just transcend. Their words 
become their epitaph 

their thoughts a meme, 
their spirits, muse. Unburdened 
of body returned to the source, 

to the place beyond words 
where they go to be born,  
your essence awaits: 

A brief note, held sweet 
                against silence 
echoes forever 
        the memory of grace.