Short Prow Poems

Frau cow now chow
How thou plow prow?
"Pow wow!" vow sow...

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Oceanic hull,
Cold aquatic figurehead:
Surging liquid prow....

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As the willow bows down
And softly weeps
The cricket in silence
Rests and sleeps

As first light touches
The heads of grass
The cone-flower blushes
At season’s pass

The dewdrop winks
At sun’s fist brow
Shades of pinks
On cloud-ship’s prow...

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The state of flow, eternal Tao
Dance in the ephemeral now
A Bound mind will not allow
A Joyous downward plow
Soft snow, honored thou
Its own meaning endow
Feet atop sacred bough 
Snow cut by skis’ prow
Let me show you how

4/5/16...

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put me on a sailboat
let me ride the winds of falling darkness
Find a star to tease a memory
Let it rain as the prow dances
swallow hot buttered rum
from a bouncing thermos
Watch the coast light up the clouds
Let the weather take me home
for at least an hour or ten
Tasting freedom at its finest...

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Seaspray hits your face
like a slap, wakes you up
cupped in the prow 
dipping up dipping down
watching for fins
coming up dolphins
you lick the salt 
from your lips
and speak of love
to the Sun

the anchor, chained,
is stored below deck,

it won’t drop
for a while





Candide Diderot. ‘24 


...

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A THOUSAND SHIPS 


Is this the face, this old hulk in the salt marsh? 
Is this my lady with creaking timbers
 and peeling skin? 

 A mere figurehead, a turkey prow, 
missing one oar, grandiloquent, vainglorious, 
still fighting the old sea-battles
with the wind and waves

the thousand ships
 that lie at the bottom of the sea....

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I have a small, small tree,
Covered by golden light.
Everyone is happy to see
My tree in Christmas night,
 
The star may be unseen,
An angel is in her prow,
The gift boxes are green  
Tied with a red bow,
 
The bedroom’s light is shut,
But the tree’s lights I keep.
Even so my love will put
Me and my girl to sleep
With a Christmas lullaby
And I will dream like a baby!...

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Death, 
apostle of deep gloom, 
wingless spectre, 
mutinous apparition, 
beautiful shadow, 
hold firm the prow and keel, 
and provoke not the gentle embers of flesh under fire, 
those delicate beacons of light, 
splitting shadows with each shattered photon, 
piercing the anarchy of night’s eternal illusion, 
God particle, 
divine paradox, 
cupped in the palm…oh human child....

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SOUNDS


Most needed sound   -
His  longship’s prow grinding
Up the stony beach ground  
In Vinland.

His  gladdest sound   -
Waves breaking on shore
Saying weeks of ocean-bound
Rowing was no more.

Most welcome sound   -
A newborn cry
Amid the all-around 
Accents of home.

………………………………………………………………………………………………..
*Based on the Lief Erikson saga about his journey to America a thousand years ago.

17  March  2020...

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The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its' speed I 'the slushy land

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears
Than the two hearts beating each to each...

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