Shoaling Poems | Examples

A Shoreless Night

This night a yellow moon
stalks root and branch.

There’s a waving sagebrush breeze
to twitch wary whiskers
The star-salted fields
and dark wooded islands
merge in a wash
of shoaling shadows.

Fox and rabbit are awake;
they sniff or tremble,
yet celebrate each warm breath.

This night plants flames
in covered eyes,
and we feel the high
dangerous joy
of all that hunt and hide.

This Shoreless Night

This night a yellow moon
stalks root and branch.

There’s a waving sagebrush breeze
to twitch wary whiskers
The star salted fields
and dark wooded islands
merge in a wash
of shoaling shadows.

Fox and rabbit are awake;
they sniff or tremble,
yet celebrate each warm breath.

This night plants flames
in covered eyes,
and we feel the high
dangerous joy
of all that hunt and hide.

Go Alone To the Sea

A briny wind and a shoaling sea shore,
and I sense a cobwebbed dispersing
the shredded unraveling of care.

Go alone to the seas edge,
take no thought or fret to that
swirling margin.
Let that wild alchemy play
as it dissolves your senses,
turning them into that sky phantom
you always knew you were.

See how the sandy pebbles
have no control as to where
the waves toss them?

Let go of your sea wall, be swept away,
rearranged,
something unplanned, unrehearsed.

Empty your vessel, be the rise and fall
of the waves and the wind.
Allow that new being to be
rediscovered.

Schisms

We are winded and on the ropes. Backwater banjo boys
strum against us. Clouds feed upon a shoaling light.
A bad day for going out or staying in.
A time to be sleepless. We must live timidly,
or push deeper into a glaring daylight 
toward the drugged dreams of the wide-eyed,
go shopping in the poorer parts of town
seek thrifty ways to survive among the striving,
give all our prayers to the birds; then eat them.
Some say they have heard the sky flap away
but many stuff fingers in their ringing ears
and gainsay both the seen and unseen.
There is no sanctuary in night's lean pantry,
the ransacked are laid bare.
Many pick the pockets of the anxious
rattle catch-penny cans on shoe-strings.
Misgivings trespass, tumble ever inward until 
reason becomes the reason to flee.
Paltry inklings gnaw at ever longer nights,
and we wonder what ‘tipping point’ tipped
what lid flipped; what line was crossed
as an ever louder twanging strums on?

A Night At a Tumbling Edge

A mottled crab scuppers its sea legs
in fluorescent foam.
Blue pods rattle on green tides.
Bladder wrack, Mermaid’s Hair
washing tangled ankles.
There are voices in my open mouth,
they roll over a briny tongue,
intone words from the breath
of spray and brume.

Where the sky hangs, gull beaks open
to scoop the bones of a shoaling surf.
My heart is booming
in a hollow seashell.

This is the Church of a God
disrobed of human thought.
This is the roofless house
of the sun and moon,
a place consecrated to the storm,
to the depths of darkness;
to the bright blades
of the suns daggering rays.

This night the rough
tussles with the calm
and they dance at the edge
of a clashing chaos.

Mother, father, stranger,
we are all here speaking
through a whirlpool’s gullet,
yet who has gone ahead of us
to express this sea-glow
and hat surfaces at the edge
of our own shores?

Pebble Beach Day Out

Beyond the wave-sacked,
lie the pockmarked dunes, heaps dug
by the claws of scaly thrashers.

Here they huddle, my blood kin
flogging grim pleasures,
wolfing eggy sandwiches,
dipping tea-stained teeth into beakers.

By a shoaling shale and monochrome spray
one brine-splattered small fry.
A boyhood caught in a swirling freshet,
he whales barefoot in the flounder,
skimming the slimy kelp, stalking
a slippage of tugging surf.

Her demeanor soggy at last, mother
goads to be led to the creaking camper.
Father smokes a plug of leathery shag,
grunts upright, walks toward the sea.

A toppled thermos and leftovers
scooped up and lugged away.
Windswept, the lingerers
trudge from the chilly churn,
while a soused and hectoring bay
records a working-class holiday.

Glory

The date and time on a digital clock
sings me a sotto voce halleluiah
as I roll over on the surf
of a shoaling shore.

This is how a poem arrives,
In a leaky boat loaded with refugees
all arriving at once.
Some refuse to shout out,
some clamor for attention.

The voices come nearer.
I am multilingual
in a non-vocal way.

When the birds sing out,
the sky will be born again,
and the Maker will make coffee,
then write something 
with my hand.

Evening Watch

Transports of hereafter
pass one leaf to unclasped heaps.

Flirty winds rearrange the hedgerow plumage,
wisp in gentle whispers.
Chipping sparrows play hid and seek 
with a watery sunlight.

Business is flourishing for the snuffling groundhog.
It’s the narrow part of the day,
a shoaling light ripples where squirrels dart.

A Blue Jay raps his usual rib-digging oldie.
Felicity flutters the loose and drifting:
the soft green carousels of evening,
the pirouette and circumvolve promenading.
Leaf bundles are ransacked by delving voles
but gently.

Seeing all this
I paint the hedgerow again with this eventide wash,
watch it all spun into dusk
from these owl bright eyes.

Fever

Transports of hereafter
pass one leaf to unclasped heaps.

Flirty winds rearrange the hedgerow plumage,
wisp in gentle whispers.
Chipping sparrows play hid and seek 
with a watery sunlight.

Business is flourishing for the snuffling groundhog.
It’s the narrow part of the day,
a shoaling light ripples where squirrels dart.

A Blue Jay raps his usual rib-digging oldie.
Felicity flutters the loose and drifting:
the soft green carousels of evening,
the pirouette and circumvolve promenading.
Leaf bundles are ransacked by delving voles
but gently.

Seeing all this
I paint the hedgerow again with this eventide wash,
watch it all spun into dusk
from these owl bright eyes.

The Sea

Looking at the calm sea on a sunny day,
I thought of schooling fishes swims around the bay, 
Maybe they are happily shoaling with their friend,
And joking around while following the trail end,

The tranquil state of the sea water bed,
Delights corals colonies to reproduce stilly,
Asexually growing within its coral head,
or maybe sexually spawning breeding be.

The bluish-green color of the sea,
It draws away awhile all the bad memory,
And sails on mind the peaceful scenery,
It gives hope and decreases anxiety,

It's good they are living under the sea,
Because they are not affected and are COVID free.

#StaySafe

Surfacing

Night is still in its diving bell.

Turn over the body-heat,
tuck head into a shoaling mind.

You imagine the window, the drapes,
the walls, the round walls
all fish-eyed and rising.

February eats whatever fat
the dawn carries with it.

Space fountains are thawing
in the drip of reality.

It is still too cold
for blood to be naked.

Night On the Beach

A mottled crab scuppers its sea legs
in fluorescent foam.
Blue pods rattle on green tides.
Bladder wrack, Mermaid’s Hair
washing tangled ankles.
There are voices in my open mouth,
they roll over a briny tongue,
intone words from the breath
of spray and brume.
Where the sky hangs, gull beaks open
to scoop the bones of a shoaling surf.

Mother, father, stranger,
we are all here speaking
through a whirlpool’s gullet,
yet who has gone ahead of us
to express this sea-glow?
What surfaces at the edge
of our own shores?

Ohio River At Sunset

lights flicker on the far side
as Kentucky folds its dark robes

a barge nudges
the river into dusk

bundles of clouds kindle

a shimmering pause

the river opens its body
to swallow the sun

knee deep in shadow
a heron yawps 

silver fish ripple through
shoaling branches

here on a crooked pier
spawning stars surface
from the milky eyes
of the recently drowned

Cold Comforts

Beyond the wave-sacked,
lie the pockmarked dunes, heaps dug
by the claws of scaly thrashers.

Here they huddle, my blood kin
flogging grim pleasures,
wolfing eggy sandwiches,
dipping tea-stained teeth into beakers.

By a shoaling shale and monochrome spray
one brine-splattered small fry.
A boyhood caught in a swirling freshet,
he whales barefoot in the flounder,
skimming the slimy kelp, stalking
a slippage of tugging surf.

Her demeanor soggy at last, mother
goads to be led to the creaking camper.
Father smokes a plug of leathery shag,
grunts upright, walks toward the sea.

A toppled thermos and leftovers
scooped up and lugged away.
Windswept, the lingerers 
trudge from the chilly churn,
while a soused and hectoring bay 
records a working-class holiday.

Song For Spring

Snow shoaling o'er the frozen land,
biting, bitter cold; broken branches 
stretched like fingers pointing nowhere 
in particular articulate the miseries 
of winter's stranglehold. 

Spring seems a light year gone,
her gentle breath a dream, but green 
shall conquer white and overcome 
its crushing hold when the crocus 
once reveals her lovely sheen!

• Short Shoaling Poems
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