surf-body

poetry from the far shore by dean schabner chapbook available at Ghost City Press

[rockawayan]

from No better place than here

from No better place than here

looked up from my desk just as a black-crowned night heron was flying along the bay shore outside my window. what could I do but write these poems: light of the falling evening rising from the bay a lone night heron appears his wings make silence even among shrieking gulls *** last light blazes up red over the darkening bay a lone night heron let blackness fall   stars blossom it's his wings…

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[rockawayan]

From ‘No better place than here’

From ‘No better place than here’

windows open, breeze carried the whispering bay into my sleep all night. then in the morning, I saw in the wetland this great egret I seemed to know among the rushes head rising on neck erect firm long yet supple to rise into fresh morning to plunge — an egret — into you No better place than here — Read on http://www.amazon.com/No-better-place-than-here/dp/1639885285/ref=sr_1_1

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[rockawayan]

From ‘No better place than here’

windows open, breeze carried the whispering bay into my sleep all night. then in the morning, I saw in the wetland this great egret I seemed to know among the rushes

rising on neck erect firm

long yet supple

to rise into fresh morning

to plunge — an egret — into you

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[rockawayan]

in field and overhead

A tanka series on brants and perception and maybe more, in the wonderful River Heron Review https://www.riverheronreview.com/issue-42#/dean-schabner-1

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[rockawayan]

A tanka series, on brants and perception and maybe more

Issue 4.2 — River Heron Review

Issue 4.2 — River Heron Review

[rockawayan]

gulls overhead

this poem, a five-tanka series with head-note, published today on Trouvaille Review https://www.trouvaillereview.org/home/gulls-overhead-by-dean-schabner

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[rockawayan]

seeking shells, I very nearly didn't see the pellet, just a baby's fist, a clutch of life's leftovers

seeking shells, I very nearly didn’t see the pellet, just a baby’s fist, a clutch of life’s leftovers

seeking shells, I very nearly didn’t see the pellet, just a baby’s fist, a clutch of life’s leftovers

almost unnoticed bundle of fishbones and scales bound without order or sense of what they had been living          before snatched from wave

lying carelessly dry as the sand bones and scales they had given form to the slippery fish       but now unneeded by life    transformed

once elegant    …

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[rockawayan]

from 'starboard blueboard' again

from ‘starboard blueboard’ again

39.

restless, unable to sleep one still summer night long ago after rain, a boy copied out a poem written in the afternoon, thinking to bring it to a yellow-haired girl’s house.  he rode there through the quiet streets, clouds breaking up to let the stars watch him go.  her house was dark.  he left his bicycle under a tree by the street and quickly crossed the big yard to the porch steps. …

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[rockawayan]

From ‘starboard blue board’

26.

lying in his rocking garvey one summer evening long ago, a boy watched how overhead a pair of young herring gulls flew together, arcing up, spinning as though on wingtip, cartwheeling in the air.

only seeing the gray birds did he realize he had been sleeping, how long he did not know. the sky beyond them was deep still blue, but then, they were in the sky, so the blue was not beyond them…

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[rockawayan]

[rockawayan]

from 'starboard blueboard'

33.

a boy woke suddenly one midnight long ago.  he felt the bed holding him rocking the way his patched old garvey rocked on the bay, or was it a slower, bigger rolling, the one he felt out beyond the breakers, where he went for the peace to be found there.

in the pale moonlight he wrote these verses on the first blank page he found in his notebook

in this still darkness a sudden…

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[rockawayan]

[rockawayan]

while the others run

there’s one plover over and

over lets the ocean

catch him soak him looking for

more I too know an ocean

[rockawayan]

only half a moon

but still it’s more than enough

silver on the bay

to reach silently into

the words we’ve yet to whisper

[vasilinaorlova]

All the poets

Say "autumn"

Instead of the "fall";

I say,

Winter.

[smakkabagms]

“let there be forgetting”

—

Sophocles, from Antigonick (tr. Anne Carson)

[fatchance]

Green flash.

Green-winged teals at the Avra Valley Water Reclamation Facility in Pima County, Arizona.

Please click photo for an enlarged view of their emerald green specula feathers.