December 2021
Ralph Skip Stevens
thismansart@gmail.com
Bio Note: Personal experience is, of course, a source for a poem; sometimes, however, it gets in the way. The first poem here was prompted by a very personal tragedy, but I couldn’t get away from the too-familiar, the cliches that tragedy can descend to. It took years and many drafts before I had something I was willing to publish (I should credit Moon Pie Press, which published it as the title poem in my collection At Bunker Cove). The second poem is pure fiction, unless, like me, you believe that trees are sentient beings.

At Bunker Cove

You know there’s something out there,
waiting in the fog that
blanks East Bunker Ledge,
or perhaps it flew yesterday
with those crows in their
angry laps around your house—
something you tend to forget
until the phone rings at midnight.
But consider—there are these
two gulls that float
side by side just off the beach,
each feather tucked away. 
They rise and fall in the swell
not moving, looking as if
they never fought for scraps of garbage.
They do not brood
over eggs that never hatch.
Isn’t such rest, such
safety, possible?
And look, today the ocean
is no more than ripples
sliding over the old stones.

Nocturne

The trees are not sleeping well tonight.
Perhaps it was the dark purple of sunset,
the rising of a blood moon.
I sensed a trembling in the heartwood
and went through the house
looking for something to sing to them,
but couldn’t find the music.
The crickets are silent now.
Only an owl has any voice
and he doesn’t reassure
the branches where he keeps watch.
I leave the house to sit with them,
the restless trees,
to think out the night and
share their uneasiness,
until the dark has lifted.
©2021 Ralph Skip Stevens
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