The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

water

      Gulf whose eye is bluest screen

      Aii the width of it settling

      and frozen fish warming

      Aii the width of it settling

      A near palm leans, frond chilled

      arched breeze and frontal cold

      North Ice

      sweep across a bright lateral

      all plumes peaked, riders wary

      risked sails the ride

      hot and cold

      a headland wilderness

      odd winter, a dismay

      to treat as cemetery. Wind.

      In gardens, in snow, in flurry and flake

      the bird wren, bare tree, to follow.

      Desire at the stake of palmetto

      Desire the empty marina tideless

      Sands

      Oars in the fronds

      through bullrushes

      Sunset the backland washes gates

      While silt as light as dawn

      over the threshing sea

Sand

      The distance

      see

      the miles produce

      reckoning,

      water

      extending

      Sand

      while

      the sky airs itself

      requests

      clouds remain

      in numbers

      far off

      also

      the hand,

      eyes, limbs

      sand tests

      coolness and heat

      body levels

      … Remain flat

      planes fly over you

      under a belly

      prone side

      of earth end

      Neutral

      to haughty black land and sea

      that swank of blue

      clammering

      greed of ear

      and rapacious its thunder,

      or even the mild wave at

      dawn’s edge

      a honey

      when youthfully it begins to boil

      and foam wildly spilled

      … noonday

      Salt throat

      the tongue clasps the swell,

      releases sends monitoring ceaseless

      thirst back to ocean depth

      tides return to dark

      The skeleton

      shock of wave lift, a column

      on the shore its profile ever foreign

      its ruin permanent recurs

      The bowl has changed color

      gulls flown inland,

      Poets walk across you their footprints

      cannot shock your softness, on you

      shells, pearls, weeds

      discards as on a mountain top

      is found record of horizon

      as Patmos is an isle,

      As you are mouth and sable skin

      range of the sandle-footed

      Rejoice

      in ancient nothingness

Wave

       i

      And preparing a net

      Wave

      whose arm is green

      your

      half-wayness I, too, would meet you there

      in foam

      Borders

      the rip slices turns backwards

      swimmers this treachery is cast by mirrors

      once in profile only this multiplied

      the arrow backstroke sent to bliss

      we cry deepest and turn not daring to spy

      full-face on ocean crest that carries on

      on

      space now azure fullest where the depth

      is danger

      long roll

      Again the ride

      And equinoctal plunge

      it dares beach the horizon

      with you

      wailings

      (that drift shrieks at low tide)

      bubbling

      the loose and soggy shelf

      Bell

       ii

      the eye tolls as burnished as Bell

      on coral the wave breaks or here

      cold zone of equal blue and grey

      Tritons’ throng appears

      where zephyrs

      cast skyward by the spume glance down

      on islands of the deep mermaids

      we’ll never see or hear yet each

      wave rolling brings in brightest

      phosphorescence their hair

      a lyre

      sweet voice of brine

      other secrets

      in the tease and stress of wave song

      Sun

      multipowered it brushes

      thins and splays

      burns

      wild-lidded over foam in air to touch

      Remembering the violence

      we turn on house pillow and let

      dolphins surmise us (dreams) the lap

      of shore water enter our heads as ponds

      forced from sea are inlets, we are

      islets become soft become grassy

      turning swaying to each and yet

      the angry

      it calls

      Noon

      the crab walks

      Night

      small fish

      Rock and dawn

      Fog