Sleet Seasonal Supplement — Summer 2011
If I'm not sending you love poems,
it's not because I'm not writing them.
As if to say a sailor is not sailing
when at sea when sleeping.
For he still dreams of the gear,
the mast, the salty ocean spray.
And as night takes on the shape of day,
his boat rides the water,
just beneath
his sprawling, sleeping body.
The night we lost
the wine goblet to the lake,
the moon shook startled
to watch us toss such fine Shiraz
to the bass below.
Beneath the last wave,
our conversation turned
small and remote
like demoted Pluto.
So we dangled our legs
below the dock in nibbling
distance of drunk bass
while a thunderstorm flowered
yellow in the west. You insisted
on swimming before the deluge—
your body sinking into murky water
above the bloated silt claiming
our summer relic.
“Shape of My Days" and “Summer Relic" were previously printed in Turbulence. The poems currently appear in Summer in Love.
Dave Malone is the author of several books of poetry and a new free ebook series, Seasons in Love (Trask Road Press), available at Smashwords and Kindle. His poems have appeared in various online and print journals as well. His interests include Ozark culture and crime fiction. For more, visit him online at davemalone.net.