POeT SHOTS is a monthly series published on the first Monday of the month. It features work by established writers followed by commentary and insight by Ray Greenblatt.
POeT SHOTS #11, Series C
NOVEMBER SURF
Some lucky day each November great waves awake and are drawn
Like smoking mountains bright from the west
And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then suddenly
The old granite forgets half a year’s filth:
The orange-peel, eggshells, pieces of clothing, the clots
Of dung in the corners of the rock, and used
Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings of the summer
Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy:
I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then . . . But all seasons
The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep,
Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long coast
Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines:
The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more numerous,
The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed
Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains
California coast, early 20th century. High surf washes the sea cliffs. “great waves awake and are drawn like smoking mountains”…”cover the cliff with white violent cleanness”…”old granite forgets half a year’s filth”…Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy”…”this cumbered continent envies its cliff.”
Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.