JULY POETRY

Poets for July : Richard Fenwick, Cheryl D Faison, Emmanuel Sibanda, Laurie Kolp and Peycho Kanev

Halfway Point

By 

Richard Fenwick

She dips an oar from an ash canoe

into the lake’s dark surface,

pulls herself toward its center

to push away the past, or

future, or even tonight’s moon.

A fish leaps, concentric circles,

two small branches drift to shore

as her oar cuts deep into the skin

of water, the lake’s thin flesh.

Resting it against her thighs,

she glides until each ripple fades,

and wonders if she should return

to their small white dock

or complete the lonely journey

to the cottage on the other side.

Geography

By

Richard Fenwick

In anticipation of my birthday,

I’ve decided not to scratch my head

searching for perfect nouns, verbs

to fill an empty space on a page.

I won’t worry about modifiers

or similes that refuse to settle in,

or the scolded child of passive voice.

No, today I will sit to admire

the prints on this wall, the map

posted over my cluttered desk

with its question mark of Africa,

its blue seahorse of Japan,

the stingray and its tail made

from the Aleutians and Alaska.

This is where I’ll wait

for my birth hour, which arrives

each year like summer gossip

to promise ten more winters,

an abundance of more gray hair.

I will leave it all behind

to read Whitman or Paz, perhaps

a bit of George Bilgere,

and after we share a sandwich

with Dutch or Belgian beer,

I’ll return alone to my map

where my mouth always waters

as I taste the bone-in ribeye

that is always South America.