Eric Ashford Poet Free verse

Fire On the Ohio River

My boat rocks gently under a reddening sun,
is it wrong to wish for a Viking burial,
to ponder a last journey West
into the dying light?

Strangers have always been my friends,
they intuit
the liquid and inflammable nature
of this thing we do.

I could rest my soul here in this skiff
on this one long warm wave of evening;
let the wooded lands and sloping meadows,
the dredged, smoke-stacked barge brimming ports,
the patched up river towns slip on by
under the kindling sails of evening clouds.

I am laid out like a homeless person
bundled up in my rags and tinder,
a shadow in a small boat, drifting.
Night falls to the water
the words of strangers flame high
fire starters and their poems gleaming
as the dark rushes in.

I hitch the boat to a stump of land,
still imagining a Viking funeral,
but also resigned to a tomorrow -
yet another strange place
to play with this fire.

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Maureen McGreavy Pigeon Tart July 26, 2020 at 12:08 PM A fave. So many things my brain not wording, “in” only I suppose. xomo Eric Ashford July 26, 2020 at 12:16 PM Thank you PT, some times we get this intuitively. Often poems can express the logically inexpressible. Great feedback e

Caren Krutsinger July 26, 2020 at 8:55 AM "the words of strangers flame high fire starters and their poems gleaming as the dark rushes in." - I loved this part! Eric Ashford July 26, 2020 at 10:34 AM Thanks for the reading Caren, I wrote this while pondering the fire that burns in some poetry while fishing on the Ohio river. Cheers e