Gentle reader – I walked again
the beach this morning
for inspiration,
for the cold to cut off my nose
in spite of everything
Where the muttering sea
has deeded seals, deer, shoes,
and an aviatrix or two –
winter provisions for me to thaw
and saw and see their way into poems
Today there was a piano –
seaweed in many keys and colors –
high and low tangled strings
pitched overboard, vibrating
in the felt hammer of wind
Fishing nets,
with notes caught up
from operatic sardines,
clams arpeggiated
in scallop flats
You ask me how to get to Carnegie Hall
and I say "Practice"
but it is many miles to row
and chase the whaled Manhattan
armed with harpoons of vaccine
Will we return to the abandonded city
we fled with toilet paper flapping
out the windows of our car
like unspooled rolls from a player piano,
like flags of surrender?
The Sunday Muse
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qbit 
…tales of brave Ulysses.
Randall, you have the makings of a Beowulf, a Gilgamesh, an American Pie. Or possibly The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tinged with shades of Howl. Manhattan as the Kraken, and you astride a heaving deck, flying the Jolly Charmin. This is great stuff you have here!
Keep scouring the horizon, the death-littered shore, and your inner DeFoe.
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“flying the Jolly Charmin” might be one of the best comments I’ve ever had. Awesome. Thanks.
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A splendid poem…and the last stanza …. perfection!! I see it all now, most especially with he Jolly Charmin flying from the antenna!! Oh wait, cars don’t have antennas any more. Where will we fly it?
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There is so much really great stuff here! Enjoy the 2nd person POV – it feels like Bronte – pulls the reader in. The piano has become a pivot in the poet’s tale of these last 12 months; gone through the discovery of death in various forms, found inspiration for writing in those discoveries, but now the bigger question of our return. I will say, also, that I enjoy the inner stanzas with unique word play and shellfish images – fun & clever! Lastly, the player piano rolls = TP rolls – that is perfect! The virus has played us and we are all unspooled.
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This was brilliant, I was thinking the other day it’s been a year since I first started working from home. I remember searching for the coveted rolls of comfort. No home delivery for that commodity you had to venture to the store in hopes of Angel soft.
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Winter provisions that are thawed do feed the poet well. This is a shore of wonderful ponderings Qbit! You never disappoint!
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The beach, the sea provided all the ingredients you needed for this masterpiece. Impossibly clever, all the word play.
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Thank you!
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Wow! ❤
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I like that comment a lot!!
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Toilet paper flapping, what a waste. While others are hoarding again this guy is flying it out his car window. I liked the seaweed part too, who’d a thunk?
..
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a veritable pot-pourri of images you bring to poetry – now I know that you collect them from the seashore
“winter provisions for me to thaw
and saw and see their way into poems.”
And what leap of imagination along these old piano keys to Manhattan and away again with a toilet paper farewell
So much movement to this poem and “the muttering sea” – hmm I wish I’d said it first!
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Lol, Thanks! Yes, for the last year pretty much all I’ve had to do is walk along the seashore (or the moors) and the Muse has dropped something in my path. Death and beauty, can’t ask for more.
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what a generous Muse – mine often summons blood from a stone
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Ahahaha! Yes.That is the way it always feels, right? I know there must be poets who have ideas for poems arriving in their imaginations easily, if not unsolicited. That sure does not describe me. I generally have to work my way through my dispair that I don’t have the slightest idea – no hope whatsoever – how to proceed.
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This speaks poetry. How it’s carved and why. I love the imagery it creates of surviving on inspiration that’s sought after.
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Thank you!
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Any time..
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“Fishing nets,
with notes caught up
from operatic sardines,
clams arpeggiated
in scallop flats”
I so love this poem and all its sea and keys.
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“Fishing nets,
with notes caught up
from operatic sardines,
clams arpeggiated
in scallop flats”
Your wordplay and wit never cease to amaze me.
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LOL! So glad you enjoyed it.
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