Tide Charts
By Paul Cameron Brown
To create dream -
the pearl thru wine effect,
oil and vinegar viscidity
of giant salad leaves
basking on the
broken picnic table
like so many lemurs
taken to a
Malagasy forest.
Liverwurst on rye,
cuff-links drag
the hard, mica table;
so, why be afraid
'cause spume from waves
glows upward
in so many trails of
grey-laden smoke?
This island looks like a loaf,
a dot or mole on inviting cheeks,
to me; so wary, invariably, of land
(and perhaps the Sand Man)
amongst all those wandering eyes,
especially the sea-scape,
curl of snake
illuminated
in a sudden, tropic shower.
See the sudden bandanna of rock
squeezed so tight by
shore's edge that a
grim hammer of stones
intones a warning?
Its back from the wars
to dive, there, among
threads of water
where needle eyes of little
fish ("young fry of treachery")
are so scalpel-like
dunes and eddies
of living colour
shake you.
To slake a thirst.
For adventure.
For precision.
Try a lavender roll of water
curved in bite recess
much as a conch's outer shell
dons triple-ripple effect.
Up the stakes. Skillets off the
meandering edge are pounding
undertows and riptides resemble
porters in foreign airports
who simply smile. . .
Purple dye
on white toga,
water retches up
on land.
A necklace, this activity, in warm shallows.
Consciousness raising - reef life coming
into contact with the bumper edge to freedom.
Heavenly bodies
parry light from the moon,
wrath from a deeper bellows
cough up one hand
raised in silver mourning.