Narrator: qbit, yours truly, marking his morning rounds of the salt marsh
Chorus: A pair of steel-rimmed spectacles
Lightning cracks one hundred years of sky –
The faraway docks of Gothenburg
are made of stone, made of stone
its boats are moored to iron rings
So lightning goes to ground
comes around, comes around
and ground returns to lightning
Finally then at sea, mornings
among the deck hands calling
back and forth, back and forth
Gulls suspended off the bow where you stood,
fly neither forward nor back,
waves are waves are waves are waves
A century's wind holding them in place –
over the harbor I watch them marking time
neither sky nor water have that answer
I turn from the ocean to a path of hard bounty –
stone and sand held out to you,
simple dirt floor of the world
this was known, this was known
Poems in your journal untranslatable, yet
I carry them with me still,
and mine, a stranger has put to wind
of foreign tongues
Iceland come, Croatia come, Kurdistan come, and on
to the East, to the West, North wind, the Southerlies
Heirloom flowers that grow from gristle and tendon
blow like seeds, blow like seeds
from across the ocean
Could you have known then,
Could you have known
one day my hands
would be so cold?
The Sunday Muse
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qbit 
This is amazing. Love the form.
Did you use a picture to avoid the brain grinding editing features of WordPress?
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Thanks so much! No, I have held off from using pictures, just wrestling with WP block brain damage most of the time. I’ve experimented with just about everything. This is a verse block that I hand spaced. If my layouts get any more complicated though, I will have no choice.
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Mic drop, WOW! This reminds me of a poem by my man, Grover Lewis, called “I Walk Out On The Wounded Fields”, which alternates between a rather beautiful and elegantly written “verse” and an in-your-face, profane and manic “perverse.” Yours does not do that, it’s smooth throughout, but has the same call and response feel to it, and reminds me of the “verse” section I mentioned. I can’t even tell you how much love this.
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Thank you! BTW, a contrasting tone could be a really good idea. I get a bit Wagnerian after I’ve huffed too many of my own lines, might be interesting to leaven the kool-aid (that works as a mixed metaphor, right?). After searching around a bit, would that poem be in “Splendor in the Short Grass” which seems like the only anthology of his work available?
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Pressing business first. This, from Joy (Hedgewitch):
WordPress won’t let me in to post on qbit’s blog and I am too blahed out to hassle with it. It was an excellent piece, tho, and I loved the hypnotic repetition and faint hint of rhyme. Very subtle and moody. Let him know I really enjoyed his poem if you get a chance.
Now then re: Grover Lewis. The poem is in the out of print “I’ll Be There In The Morning If I Live.” It is still available on eBay, but pricey. “Spendor” is, I think, a collection from all his writings; the poem I mentioned may or may not be in there. If you give me your email (the one Carrie shared doesn’t work), I will copy it down for you.
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Pressing business above all else: Please tell Joy thanks so much, and how much i miss her poems.
Re Lewis, I found a used copy of “I’ll Be There in the Morning” for not too much, on order. My email, hmmm… Can you try hitting me on my “About” page, and let’s see if your email comes through to me then I can respond, blah blah. Will revert to just posting it here if that doesn’t work!
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Done. And I am super-stoked that you’re getting that book!
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Oh. There is something in the chorus that just reverberates, eerily, right into the present quiet. Amazing poem.
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Thanks! Eerie reverberations ‘R us!
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I like the repetition in the refrain…it is a refrain. I honestly don’t know if I understand this, but it is intriguing.
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Thanks. Not sure there was actually anything to understand in the poem, LOL! As long as you kept reading and didn’t toss it and say “Bah!”
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Nope, definitely not.
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The whole feel of this is breathtaking Qbit! This moves the reader and captivates him all at once! Absolutely brilliant!!!!!
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Thank you!!
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Epic work, Randall.
Maybe you need more island time (!!!). 🙂
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Ahahaha! Yes, but if I stay too long I’m going to start in with the White Whale stuff, at which point it will be time for an intervention!
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There is a unique weird in all of us that write. You have traveled through it brilliantly. I love the chorus. It feels like waves splashing against a shore that changes as the sea pulls back to its heart.
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Thanks!
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A chant quality about his whole thing; feels like there should be drums and seed shakers. I really like the summoning of the directions, the specificity of it. Very aural.
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Drums and shakers would be cool. In fact, the reeds (still very dry) were rattling in the wind in a way that sounded like high-voltage lines. That would have been good to work in.
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Your lost love poem has the feel of a sea shanty but harpooning hearts rather than whales. There’s a beautiful lyrical quality to it. A real joy to travel through.
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Thank you!
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You’re welcome 🙂
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WordPress and Blogger seem determined to snuff our visual creativity in presenting our poems. I see you managed this the “hard way”, which is necessary on Blogger as well! Great poem!
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Lol! Thanks!
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The back and forth language, back and forth rhythm, pacing … all of it quite breathtaking … coming up for air now!
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Thanks!!
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The chorus backs up the flow of the excellent poem!
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The choruses are neat. I liked the story too.
And I think the Heirloom flowers might be tough.
..
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Ahahaha! Yes.
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