The Lullaby
On the day of the three dolphins with no other premonition I could feel this page of paper simply disappeared & my pen began speaking aloud as if it had intended to do so all along. Several moments, present upon present times elapsed, until my ear acclimated to song, a pure song of some few birds whose voices I have painfully learned through perhaps years of familiarity. Let me say it was more an evening psalm, a whispering of vespers in cooling, still air. Or maybe it was more a lullaby because I became lulled, slowed, stopped, listened. I stood until light dimmed, & I listened
Gulf Coast Sutra
celedon seas this ebb clouded time grasp of moon beginning to wax gentle invisible by afternoon light soft gray flat mask hides the sun one ring-billed gull one dolphin cresting up eying the peninsula the one woman kneeling one willet one sanderling grab cautious glimpses twitter skitter dip dip quick bows to wet sand well aware one gritty valve of Atlantic cockle dribbles salt water poured by low waves one quiet secret susurrus of surf knowing as horseshoe crabs do Earth turns only so quickly rise go among broken shells behold white pelicans starting their journey north spring’s neap nears one tide at a time
A recent “Best of the Net” nominee, five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had poetry appeared dozens of publications as well as in many anthologies. She has six books to her credit, including Godwit: Poems of Canada, which received the 2009 Andrew Eiseman Writers Award for Poetry, and her new chapbook, The Urn, from Finishing Line Press. Forthcoming from Salmon Press is her full-length collection Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. Currently in the works is a book of technologically themed poems, The Gizmo Girl’s Diary, as well as an application for a second National Park Artist Residency. She was founding poetry editor of Sea Stories (www.seastories.org), and is now book reviewer and assistant editor for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com) and moderator of the poetry blog, Smothered Air (http://smotheredair.yuku.com/). She teaches at Writers & Books, Rochester, NY. You can read more about her and sample her poems and photographs at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. She resides in part-time in Kent, NY, and winters in North Fort Myers, FL.
Steel Toe Review 