SPRING EGRET
Last summer this egret
high-stepped the salt marsh
a white puff of grace
more follies fan than bird
keen eyes keeping watch
in the body’s long curves
like the f-holes of a cello
bending low to the sun
stained flats to spear a shad
swallow, cry in voice phlegmy
as an old woman in hospice
the augury of tides –
this spring’s fan of bone arrayed
in stony shallows, chill ripples
lapping leached beauty
beginning the slow, slow dissolve
EAST END ELEGY
for Antje Katcher
the pink of our teens
had long ago popped
consuming passions
burnt down to nostalgia
era of firsts behind us
marriages, jobs, failures
we fit at last the patchwork
costume called self
*
in a dimming afternoon
summerscape we trudged
the lip of a sand bluff
pausing to gaze out
on Cedar Point, Maidstone,
Gardiner’s Bay, Shelter Island
in the amethyst distance
Orient, disease-frizzed Plum
*
lee path choked with grape vine
bittersweet, pitch pine, rose
windward, sheer drop
to a shell encrusted beach
blackbacks, scoters, plovers
ancient skiff with rusted oarlocks
splintered starboard gunwale
fisherwind rising for to ferry us away
*
all this long ago, before
the potato fields were blighted
before the hypno-rich arrived
to claim the sea as their mirror
but I see us again there
and then, see how young
we were without knowing it
how happy without a clue
*
how beautiful that day
that shimmering stretch
of sea sand, perched high
on the shifting lip of it
the silence sweet and salty
with all the time in the world
to say what needed to be said
all the time that never was
(These poems have previously appeared in Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023)
Paul Genega’s seventh full-length collection, Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023, was published by Salmon Poetry in December, 2023. Over a long career, his poems have appeared in scores of magazines and journals, including Poetry, New York Quarterly, The Nation and North American Review. He is Professor Emeritus at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University in New Jersey where he founded the creative writing program, taught literature and writing, chaired the Humanities Division, and served as Chair of Faculty. Visit him at www.paulgenega.com.
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