Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2021
The Island George Moore The sea is scratched glass and in turn it scratches glass and knees the sea some monstrous beginning always beginning again and I am not use to it this deep wood at its edge like an ingrown wall of trees I am more the mountain ruach calling from an outcropping above timberline seeing all the way across a day’s walk west and feeling empty in an airless home But the islands are out there just beyond this rumbling edge An old Orthodox woman all in black sits on a garden wall and pulls the skin from a rabbit in a single jerk and holds it up an offering to her unknown god or the space she fills But mine are the gods of infinite surmise the echoes off crowns of snowy peaks the emptiness of canyons crying back I am never an island or the sea surrounding it where the fishermen go out in their damaged boats on glass and the winds deny them peace
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