MONTH'S MUSINGS, Silver ~ Odin 14 Options

[Psyche]

Month’s Musings

..........I

Gargantuan waves
pound pitching ship.
We round Cape Horn ahead
of summer dawn, decks creaking violently
in dimness of a stealthy moon.

The gale hurtles clouds towards
a horizon fisted by fierce waves.
We peer from homespun balaclavas
at implausible ocean swells.

Daybreak rumbles out of steel skies:
- Look Mummy! There’s the Albatross,
like in The Ancient Mariner!
I’d never harm an albatross…

Enrico ‘C’ thrusts through appalling seas,
skirts Isle of Estados,
veers towards Malvinas
as eager gulls grasp spoils in her wake.
Docked in Puerto Argentino,
false legends ride reality’s wharf.

A shipshape town where slate-roofed
cottages confine startling blossoms
in glassed porches.
Man-made marvel on this farthermost
archipelago wearied by remorseless
fangs of the Atlantic.
Girls dream of Latin men, tango, city lights,
of fleeing from their crucified
existences nailed to the history
of these peaty isles.

Unsheltered universe tousles
skimpy vegetation; I still harbour treeless
finitude in my eyes and midsummer
chill under my skin.
Peat bonfires branded
my soul with sorrow.

You and I board ship heading
towards unruffled northern waters,
join in games, parties, homecoming…

.................II

Your merriment peals in my mind’s
abject niches this Summer solstice;
an undertow of gaiety in loss.
I gaze out my window at unresponsive
Buenos Aires skyline.
Down below, rushing roads
know no contrition.

Far-flung idylls are icy prongs
impaling my bones,
re-birthed in the empty enormity of time.

Focused on faces furrowed by labour,
callous sunlight shrouds sidewalks.
I learn there are many roads to God,
some etched on desolate design.


By Psyche

Note: I have not italized Spanish proper names, since these are correct in our Southern Hemisphere (In the same way that one would not translate 'Porto Alegre' to 'Happy Port', to give an example of a Brazilian port).

Copyright: Sylvia Maclagan, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 13-01-2009.

[Guest_ohsteve_*]

Sylvia, Very well done in placing second and third, I will just give my congrats here but please consider them given for both pieces.

Steve