Michael T. Young Verse-Virtual 2017 May

May 2017

I studied and practiced martial arts almost fanatically when I was a teenager but injured my back when I was fifteen. I started writing poetry and by the time my back healed, I decided to be a poet rather than the next Bruce Lee. Since then I’ve published four collections of poetry and received recognitions such as a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. You can keep up with my work at www.michaeltyoung.com.

A Parade of Sails
The July 4, 2000 Celebration in New York Harbor

A haze rises from the Hudson.
Gray light through the clouds
dirties the white fabric of sails:
small sloops, schooners and clippers
drifting between naval flagships.
A thread of weather angles down,
billowing the layered slopes, sheets
stretched under a displacement of pressures
propelling their glide over the waves —
a pattern of motion splitting
the river into a splay of wakes.
And this is the shape of independence,
the figure its body makes through time —
the dark water sliced and welded,
the ships roped in their own rigging,
the currents of air, the weather,
the clouds and we, the crowd,
watching from the shore,
dazzled by the beauty and grace
passing by and passing away.

First published in Rattapallax

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