June 2021
Sterling Warner
jsterlingwarner@gmail.com
Bio Note: A Washington based author, poet, and educator, my poems and stories have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals and anthologies such as Sparks of Calliope: A journal of Poetic Observation, Uppagus, and The Fib Review. My most recent poetry/fiction collections include Rags & Feathers, Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories, and Serpent’s Tooth: Poems. Currently, I enjoy writing, turning wood, participating in “virtual” poetry readings, and fishing along the Hood Canal.

Tacking & Jibbing

Windsock in the breeze
hanging by a thread
on my patio awning
offers me a visual 
& tactile compass,
a silken koi fish
randomly shifting
height and direction, 
as I launched my schooner
docked on a community 
pier; there I unfurrow
two wrinkled canvass sails
let the wrinkled fabric
capture brisk, unbridled air:
expanding, filling
billowing, jutting
high & low, back & forth
like a box kite
dueling gusts,
pulling my water craft
forward, creasing the lake’s 
smooth glassy face…
ever on the move
zigging
zagging
pivoting.
©2021 Sterling Warner
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL