Original Poetry

"Birthplace"


When the wind moves through our trees, that's when they tell me
to think of Africa.

there's something different—
it's a soul drummed into withered slabs of ex-crop;
footprints of cattle, birds in every aching joint.
you were Wilberforce's song, across this ocean, but even I can't taste
you—perhaps you'll pluck my eyes in
and leave me for your buzzards, the lightheaded
spiral and buzz of insect wings, and famine like pain in the back
of my skull. the dizzying sear of salt-etched soil and bison birthing; I'll never lose sight
of the fragrant brush of long grass, but here in my history I am little more than trees. trees and
damp sky, but I still think on your thunderstorms

and the way your heels would strike the ground like rain, your screaming in the lashing wind

And the pounding of your souls in the dust
to sting my sight of you, the kind to cloud my
lungs and cake my nostrils, aye

A shroud of sun-tossed dust
and your harsh breathing
and Africa
and the way you ran with
your eyes at the mountains



--
Copyright 2011 J Coate

So I'm a bad blogger. Did we already establish that?

... I need to get back to my posting-every-Thursday routine. Or something like that. I'm not going to apologize for the prolonged silence (life happens), so have some original poetry instead.


"Northern Passage"

Silver boatman, sing to me
eyes on the horizon, wrapped
in a shroud of the morning wind.
Grey the sky and grim the rain,
trickle-down ice over
the wilderness of wounded water,
Russian frost that cracks the air.
Chains in a cloud-churned sky.

Sing to me, silver boatman.
As the sunlight turns to ashes, let
it touch my upturned face,
whisper from Cherubim burning.
Tracks like tears down a sallow cheek,
let me taste the homeward lifting,
shifting of numb fingers on the
side of my little vessel, storm-tossed, wanderer. Sing to me.

Silver boatman, let me be.
O moon of winter,
toss your stars over the moving water, your
shadowed cape drawing o’er sight; bury the dead.
The bells of Skellig over rock and wave.
Let the gulls cry, words for me, shriek my soul what
cannot be said. O God.

Silver boatman, take me there.