2016 | epistolographer

I will go mad if you do not write soon
muttering charcoal, gold spinnakers off
past oceans, my hair a compendium
a sailor’s book of every kind of knot

If I could backmask all your vinyl sighs
unzip the sky, refurbish the mountains
with your corduroy light, fevers drawn out
my own star, you are as cold as heaven

the world is a shiny gun, a bullet
that’s going to backfire, out of your hands
while I keep longing for yellow dresses
and meeting you in your Allen Edmonds

but each to his own, artful persuasions
Cezanne’s apples, and all the finished poems
of the Romantics- if you write at all,
it is possible, just I will read it

judging by, our love, the artist’s reward
I say this will be a year of first drafts
the way I sailed unversed frames on water
the day you gave each last painting away

#2016

epilogue

I imagined tenderness
sweat and agony
the new pain of straddling
another destiny
and the roar
of monsters chained
at the end
of the last cavern where there are only bones
a fable of conquest
with ample evidence that it did not appease
that mythic hunger
but required instead a surrender
far more ultimate in terms

I glimpsed horizons
of need and canons
the knocking
of a breeze off the ocean
a tide of admissions
wet as envelopes
seals and confessions
a cursive front
a borne rhythm on and on
the easy lapping of War ships
when there is no enemy
and the end, the end
I longed for

I wrote backwards
an enduring alphabet laid
out to dry, as fitting
on a short line
a fleet of armies and arms
wanting to hear your last serenade
a flag on the island
in the wind, what was only natural
but the jungle is sold
and the last wildness is in your eyes
still I wish I could meet you again now
for the first time
and explain everything from the beginning

Copyright © 2018 · Elizabeth Ganot · All Rights Reserved ·

epistolographer

Elizabeth Ganot · Letters from Islands · Poems and Seasons

Category Archives: 2016

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