May 2015
I believe poetry is part of a deeper connection among our environment, our species, and others who have developed with us on Earth, and so I write to engage this deeper field of experience. I try to make sense of subject matters (as Pound stated) through sounds engaging with imagination, but not from an egocentric place. The ego has been a legacy inheritance we have contended with for too long. Poetry is about the other, not the self—it is about empathy, not ego.
Cape Cod
The tide rolled in, receded out, and slowly rolled again,
that late, October afternoon.
The sounds of gulls, I heard behind my head,
remained repeating, though my thoughts were loud,
were faint, were loud again,
that late, October afternoon.
The winds blew southward frigid air
that rolled sands off backs of beach-formed hills,
behind my head, onto my head, this same small place, where gulls
and thoughts and waves came crashing to this point.
And now, again, arrived,
this late, October afternoon,
I hear the sounds of winds and gulls, of thoughts and waves
replacing what I knew with newer memories, but sand
still strikes me on my head, and gulls still sound behind my head,
so faint, so loud, and faint again,
this late, October afternoon.
-first published in The Innisfree Poetry Journal
The tide rolled in, receded out, and slowly rolled again,
that late, October afternoon.
The sounds of gulls, I heard behind my head,
remained repeating, though my thoughts were loud,
were faint, were loud again,
that late, October afternoon.
The winds blew southward frigid air
that rolled sands off backs of beach-formed hills,
behind my head, onto my head, this same small place, where gulls
and thoughts and waves came crashing to this point.
And now, again, arrived,
this late, October afternoon,
I hear the sounds of winds and gulls, of thoughts and waves
replacing what I knew with newer memories, but sand
still strikes me on my head, and gulls still sound behind my head,
so faint, so loud, and faint again,
this late, October afternoon.
-first published in The Innisfree Poetry Journal
©2015 C.M. Foltz