September 2017
Ralph Skip Stevens
thismansart@gmail.com
I live on a small island on the coast of Maine near Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  We have a lot of rocks and spruce forest, seagulls and osprey and the Atlantic Ocean, and these things get into poems.  I make a living teaching English online, a different sort of environment, and although I manage to maintain a love of literature while staring at the computer screen, (and although I publish in this online journal), I don’t write poems about the Internet.

What I Never Told You 


Some day you might wonder why
I never told you this
so I’ll tell you now, that
one Christmas I took the family
to a small island,
to a harbor like a coat sleeve,
long and dark, where we tied up
thinking we’d be the only ones.
In the night another boat
arrived and docked along with us.
We said hello but there was no need
to strike up an acquaintance.
We all knew why we were there
and it wasn’t to mix drinks
and relax, savoring a successful voyage.
The night was cold and black.
There was an owl calling,
an answering call, and the cracking
of the dock's cold timbers,
planks whiskered with frost.
The water was an inverted sky,
galaxies of phosphor stars
that reeled around the dock's
tarred, crusted legs.
There were presents
in the cabin, a small
Christmas tree but these
were hardly necessary
in the heart of such a kingdom.
©2017 Ralph Skip Stevens
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