Poems by Raphael, Bertolino, Tremblay, Hotchkiss, & Pesznecker

           

  

Five Poems by Dan Raphael
                  

                                                

        

Autumn Jade
           
              

 i’m where rocks trick the sea into jumping to evaporation, a 
     place where not all who enter return.
the road attempts safe expedience but always surrenders to 
     the seas wild cousins, to lord gravity,
cause we yearn for the horizon, yearn to feel the moon pushing 
     us outside of our skin
              
as the shadow of winter grows, the shaman in my bones keens 
     caution and memory,
a winter ocean is immune to, balancing the sun’s heat or absence
with a constant current of arctic based chill, a life of immoderation—
constant night or constant day–or like Chicago with intolerable 
     winters and summers
where the fortnights of spring and fall are unbuttoning revels 
     cinched back
when thermal extremes burst through the neighborhood
echoing like  compressed storms in the hallway that starts 
     in my throat and ends beneath me
                 
i could use a bulbous headed kelp strand as a voodoo doll 
     for myself,
waiting for the dot-sized nibblers who may already be inside me,
sensing my beached stasis to awaken and feast, to dig their way 
     to the Valhalla of open air,
protected from the siren influence of rain, rain that would carry us 
     to a salty airless nightmare
            
 a hundred miles inland my room gets colder when i close the curtain 
     to contain the heat
fueled by electricity made from captured rivers and eons-old sunlight 
     refined with the trees it fueled :
                     
the ½ mile away freeway rumbles as if it’s the ocean, each car 
     a wave heading one way
passing its depleted self returning the other,
having visited or delivered, having spent and eaten. .
nothing swims beneath the asphalt surface, the tide of traffic
pulled by the incandescent moon of trade,
as if each wave is going to shore to work a 6 hour shift.
       
still gravity tugs,    rain insists,   
and the 24 hour mantra of 4 wheeled wave after wave will break 
     through this false bottom
to liberate soil kept decades in isolation, like rip van winkle
quickly evolving through microchips and self-hypnosis
inexpensive technology and sales techniques
              
the moon surrenders so  the tide keeps contracting, exposing the bones
of previous technologies, unleashing the weather from its 
     gravitational bondage,
putting up the sign “commercial property–will develop to suit.”
as another 3 thousand sq ft vacation home gets between me 
     and the ocean,
takes another nibble out of the horizon
i feel like a cormorant when the slough between waves sinks me 
     into a valley of mountainous water
and in a microsecond of lost faith im not sure i will rise back to level
before the waves surround me

                   
                 
               

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