Poetry Friday: Poetry as Explanation

Well, Peter J. Leithart said it, not me. And unlike Lucretius, I don't really know what, exactly, I'm explaining, unless it's how to stand by Charleston Harbor and channel The Poet Known in My House as Alfred, Lord Tennisball, or somebody, sort of:

Observation

The winter harbor’s rumple and fall,

Pewter-colored, slaps the pilings.

Black on the white sky, seagulls call,

And pigeons stalk the railings.

The day is full of wind and wings

And screams and wordless hungerings

Of a million wild inhuman things

And the salt grasses growing.

From the pier’s end you can see the tide

Reaching in and in and in.

Beneath its surge the dolphins ride:

Now and then a fin

Rises, glossy-brown and thin,

A shadow on the water’s skin –

You see it, then you don’t again --

And a wet breath blowing.

Unseen, they drive the schooling fish

Like bonfire sparks a storm wind harries

Across a shifting twilit grayish

Atmosphere. From aeries

Of open water, while daylight tarries,

They rise and stoop while the surge-tide carries

The flickering wide-eyed silver flurries

Against the steepening sand.

You lean on the rail, and you watch the sea

Overturn itself as the pelicans row

Rough tides of wind overhead, and the gray

Dolphins breach and blow.

The shoals of fish surge on;  although

They live, hopeless, to die, they go

Forward while the grasses grow,

And the sun walks on land. 

Okay, rhyme schemes are fun, all right? Really, really fun. You can have your old Sudoku and your crosswords:  this is how to lie awake at night. And I didn't give it up for Lent.

 Meanwhile, go visit Liz at Liz in Ink for the rest of the Friday fun.


P.S. This is quite unfinished. I started it the other day, and am not at all happy with the final stanza, where the "conclusions" the poem reaches, if "conclusions" is even the right word, are marking the place for something else that's supposed to be there. (See "how to lie awake," above.)