May 2020
Laura Mazza-Dixon
mazzadixon@gmail.com / Forged by Joy (Facebook)
Bio Note: I am a classical guitar teacher and early music ensemble director. When I was a child, my grandmother allowed me to write my poems in the back of her small grey poetry notebook. Many years later, in a correspondence with Richard Wilbur about the importance of revisiting and revising older poems, I began to learn how to "keep inspiration on tap."

Thanks to the editor and publisher, Rennie McQuilkin, my first book of poetry, Forged by Joy, came out in 2017 with Antrim House Books. It has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. My poem about the Rohingya refugees, "The Year in Pictures: A 2017 Triptych," was chosen as a finalist in the 48th New Millenium Awards for 2020.

The Outer Edge

The gulls gather at the outer edge 
of the wide sand bar
where the red channel marker
warns the boats away.

With the tide going out,
hundreds of the white birds
are content to settle quietly,

sipping sweet water 
from the marshy spring,
feasting on shells 
hidden in the rockweed.

A stiff wind from the west, 
running hard against the tide, 

sweeps the small swells 
into diagonal lines of whitecaps 
that stretch across the reach.

Beyond the broad expanse
of glimmering sand,
bright buoys are scattered

through the light that dances 
between the shore and the islands.

Beneath the surface, 
lobsters shedding their old shells 
seek shelter in the shallows, 
venture into the parlors of wire traps.

Boats will open wide wakes 
with the speed of their lifted bows 
and pause, engines humming,
to draw the traps up, one by one, 

after the Sabbath has ended 
and the moon has risen
and set again
over the dark harbor.
©2020 Laura Mazza-Dixon
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL