By J.J. Tindall
MY SILVER SOUL THE SEA
My soul the sea: sucking
my mind from my skull
like a clam
from its shell, draining
my sweet, slow
juice.
Sitting in the rain
at the Planetarium. Falling from the sky:
the saltless sea. On the left, a festival
of architecture, organic sculpture
alight. Mist aglow, the sky giving its ritual
Spring performance, mirrored
in the torguoise sea. Teal, taupe, agate, shale…
Gods of Gitchigumi blowing
in my ear. Chaos: the dynamo hum
of the neighborhoods a distant sea-shell aria.
Even Olympian ghosts now loom.
Skyline of neon mausoleums. Spiked shoulders,
hog-ghost compendium, glass slicing the northeast
gale.
My lake, my soul, the sea. The west sun dying
in pink and purple, moon-birth shimmering
skull-white. Soul: drift away,
drift, drift away.
Here on the sea
I can breathe, and rain makes Men O’ War
of the eastern clouds, sleek and slow upon the
horizon.
The slow sea gleans me,
cleans my bitter
blood,
the glittering
grey gravity
sucking me,
sucking me,
slowly
back to the
hood.
–
J. J. Tindall is the Beachwood’s poet-in-residence. He can reached at jjtindall@yahoo.com. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.
Posted on May 5, 2008