April is Poetry Month
Posted April 12, 2019 at 5:48 am by Tim Dustrude
In our continuing April is Poetry Month series, the San Juan Update is sharing poems from local poets every Friday this month. Today is the 2nd Friday and today we have Tara MacMahon, with her poem “With”, and Susie Hale, with “Boundaries’:
With
Daisies twirling on the meadow,
the race with Paul, we always win!
one three five
he loves me he loves me he always loves me.
Tara MacMahon
* * *
Boundaries
Cormorants
have chosen the row of pines
above the Yacht Club docks.
Sixty juvenile birds
fish all day in the Straights of Juan de Fuca
seeking shelter bays with light fish.
Five thirty or so they come
to roost in the trees,
staining the rocks below
white and fishy.
Their black necks question marks—
gurgle and grunting drains that
flush into open air.
These Cormorants find refuge here—
show no signs of moving North,
forcing the question of boundary.
We take swift action to protect
what we believe is ours.
A noisy air horn blast
at incoming birds,
.
Swift, they roll and dive away,
reconvene on the water
behind a trawler stretching to the
length of her mooring.
They retreat until a scout flies
to test the line again.
Another blast—
a shiver of wings through the water
break on the shore below.
We cannot stop this wave
of water or of birds.
We have no heart to shoot!
No heart to end this invasive punctuation by
changing the question marks to periods.
So, in the end, we simply—
changed the only rules we could,
the boundaries of our thinking
and let them have their way.
Susie Foster Hale
Originally published in the Soundings Review
Spring/Summer 2012 issue
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Categories: Arts
One comment:
One comment...
So true, thanks for the trip down memory lane. JC
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