ABOVE THE BAY

Here is a picture of myself and my high school boyfriend Gregory in August 1965. We were 17 and 19 that sailing summer. Young love grew too complex and we lost touch for decades.  Now he lives in a seacoast city near London with the ocean a mere walk away while I look out my window to see the Blue Ridge Mountains and deer grazing fallen apples in my back yard. I couldn’t imagine in 1965 I would leave our home state of Rhode Island or the shores of Narragansett Bay. Greg and I have been internet pen pals since 1999, when I discovered on Amazon his first brilliant book on popular art and culture and sent congratulations. We talked and keep on talking. I sat down when we first got in touch and jotted down a rhyming poem to honor our shared past:

ABOVE THE BAY (1999)

A small boat bobs upon the bay

A mere speck in the tide.

Memory’s the vessel

Where youth’s dominion hides.

Love without love’s wisdom,

Love’s patience, or love’s care

Skimming over wavelets

Shimmering in the air.

Undiscovered sorrows

Just dreams, forgotten soon –

Too busy with the sunshine

Too rakish with the moon

Too full of life to know it

Too drunk with swollen kisses.

What is the stuff of paradise?

We wake to find that this is.

(copyright Cathy Larson Sky) 

 photo credit: G N Votolato

HIGH SUMMER BLUES

No blog entries lately because it has been all I could do to survive the storms and heat of summer. Finally I was able to give voice to my feelings with this poem. Sometimes I find myself channeling the rhythms and language of the Romantic poets, because I love them, especially Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley.

SUMMER’S GAZE (The Mole's Lament)

The naked gaze

Of August days

Strips away the subtle shades:

The timid Spring,

The elphin glades.

The brutal sun

The Shining One

Robs every private breath

The lungs possess

Till leaves succumb,

And meet their death.

I flee this heat

On tiny feet

On naked pink and scurrying toes

I dig, I borrow in the loam

Seeking cool and fragrant home.

While in the sky

Great hawks do fly

Regarding, with most bitter eye

The prey below

And limbs that blow

The clouds of pollen to and fro.

These yellow clouds

That blur the sight

This yellow sun that drives the night

From resting place on hill and dale

And strips the fields of summer yields

And burns the skin once fresh and pale.

Summer, with your staggering heat

Crueler more than Winter’s cold

Merciless, your summer storms

Your rattling, shattering skies unfold

Burst and boom through every room

And keep the gentle child afraid

There is no silence in the trees

But drums of wings the insects made.

Sick of light, I long for dark

Lapis, cobalt, purple, ink

Poems writ of indigo

The dome'd void, the stars that wink.