BY SHALLOW SEAS By shallow seas, manhood survives, combing through spume and foam, away from eyes on busy streets; stale odors ooze from honking horns, slime and brick. By shallow seas, our lives begin, beaking through surf for seed, to thrive where no seed springs. Only the ant in concert sings, gorging on rotten stumps. By this shallow sea, this pock-marked coast, flagging white tearstained hankies, a mark of respect to unknown legions of dead fishermen, each year, lost at sea. By this shallow sea, an old woman begging for alms, tells in tears, how her son was shot in America for a few cents his soil could never yield. I feel her loss but cannot raise these arms in anger at comrades fleeing the green milk of native bays. We who are left behind are not enough To pay the rent from cozy office jobs, or quench the flame’s disfiguring tongue. Thought erases meaning from this text. This poem is void; only words on paper. My pen will not expose its point. If like gulls we scream for alien shores, a kinder softer sun, who proclaims our guilt? Where nothing flees from nothing, Nothing survives. © McDonald Dixon 1967
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 11:56:09 +0000
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