Issue 13
Winter 2003
Paul Greenhow
Sometime banker, sometime analyst, less often...poet.
My Dali Print
There is a Dali print on the wall,
it has hung in that place for years.
A molten twisted landscape that
draws me in and now and again
I stand to confront it, dare it
to reveal some subtle detail
that I had missed before.
If I see some small new piece,
I wonder if it was there yesterday
or whether the image has shifted.
Perhaps I had to change to see?
Red Cap
Bright red cap clamped firmly to her head,
she walked among the stony faced people;
granite eyed, flint expressioned people living
narrow lives in monochrome days and colorless nights.
Their obduracy frightens her, she rushes past,
a gleam of colour within their achromic society.
The Clown
I remember you in a ballgown,
I thought you strangely exotic
w ith your bright red lips,
mascara'd eyes and rouged cheeks.
I thought of clowns;
My mother, the clown.
My Seven SeasStanding in the salt spray of this impressive ocean
listening to the roaring breakers rolling endlessly in,
I was taken away to other days, other seas, other loves.To paddling in gentle lapping waves, feet curling
around crinkled sand and, chuckling happily,
stamping hard as tiny feet permit
to splash the hand-holders, their skirts hoisted
avoiding the imaginary spray of that shallow sea.We were inseparable, the boy and his sea.
I roamed the shore, built sandcastles
and watched while playful waves breached
sandy walls and took back the ground I had stolen.
As I grew, I liked the winter best. Sudden storms
changed the shape of the beach I knew so well,
brought new sights, new sounds, new odors
and I popped sea weed seed pods with cheery gusto,
savoring the rich new smell of the shore.
Beachcombers would descend like magpies
looking for glistening jetsam among the tendrils.
On clear summer days, I leaned on the rails
above the beach and looked across the bay
at lovely Lulworth and the limestone cliffs
around it, that slipped into the valley and,
reddened, rose again. I knew those cliffs,
jumped the tide pools at their feet,
lay on bigger rocks I pretended were mine.My friends and I built bonfires on the sand
from cardboard and wood stolen from
dustbins, begged from shopkeepers,
and donated by crafty old women,
who saved it for us to haul for free.
We let off fireworks, baked spuds, burned sausage
in the embers of our fire,
all to celebrate a Guy we did not know.
At highest tides, the sea would wash the beach
clean again, clean of the ashes of childish play.My second sea was a tropical ocean,
warm and embracing, its beaches hot.
I swam and snorkeled and learned to kiss a girl
as her sisters teased and her brother sulked.
We explored the nearby island and goggled
at the coral, pink and thrilling with limitless fish
swimming in clouds this way and that, avoiding
clumsy hands as we reached for them.
Eternal summer days, seasons molten into one,
but summers have storms too, beaches changed,
flotsam driftwood landed and bleached,
bottles landed, never with message, though I always looked.
I was tanned and lithe then, an expatriate boy
roaming and enjoying the hot sun on my back
resting when I would, working never.My third sea near my first, was pebble hard,
no easy pace on forgiving sand, but on shifting stones
that rolled away from my weight it was slow to walk.
I fished there, casting and trolling, casting and trolling
for the blue-gray mackerel that gave themselves up
in tens to my hooks. They paid my summers.
I fished by day and by night, at my first beach,
loved tourist girls roughly, selfishly in secret hides,
fought in gangs, bruised and was bruised, cut and was cut.
Still, I often roamed alone, enjoying
the wild wonderment of the sea and the changing shore.
I stood in the morning shadow of stony Portland
wondering what I would be.
Perhaps I would fish forever.But new beaches beckoned and I went willingly,
walked new shores and the white cliffs above,
or, a little farther, enjoyed softer love on grassy dunes.
Working now, married now, time was short but,
still, on sunny days I would kick the sand,
watch the ships pass through these busy lanes,
wonder about the France that I could see so near,
smell the salt on the air and be content.Those days were short, and I left the sea
behind me, seduced by the sights of the city.I never escaped.
If the moon is a harsh mistress, the sea is harsher.
Through my years, I have always returned
to enjoy her salty kisses on the breeze,
walk quietly by her side, with now her whispers,
now her storms reproving me for my faithlessness.
But I was never untrue, I flirted with rivers
and mountains and wild wilderness lands,
but my heart was hers and I always came back.
I have walked thousands of miles along her shores,
sailed many more on her tireless surface,
stood on hot rock and admired the mounts of Atlas,
across a small sea strait;
stood and seen five lands across a single sea.
I have watched the sun come up and the sun go down
into many welcoming seas and oceans.
Standing in the salt spray of this impressive ocean
hearing roaring breakers rolling endlessly in,
I wonder,
will this ocean be my last? I cannot see across.
I walk with a love at each side, but I cannot see across.