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Poetry || SubmissionsHarbor WordsBy Colin Wolfe The sun beats on the neon lights, dulls them, makes of the signs a wall like a huge wave suspended like a Damoclean or Damsel sword with rubber edges, hard closed till the till comes round again when the stars are eclipsed by streetlights and the courage of a frog to sing knows only a vat of lager to home in -- living in the future, seeds are. Now is the dissecting light poured from the dessicant sun on the desecrated land land where my fathers died, land of pride skis on the mountainside, speeding thrilling down down down-- magnify me, oh history, the unrepentant cry and in the immigrant singing words, we all fall down The great lady, product of France, still holds our torch up above the pointed crown and slapdash waves and the sound of hundreds and thousands and millions of feet pattering and clopping and squeaking below: the tourist hordes, becameraed, deboated, search like poor Paul all come to look for America, come to this shrine this icon, this magnet, this mother, this messenger as if her torch in this land of two hundred plus million free lights could, like a sun over the sky, one center hold the way one Ellis Island holds many lists and lists of names the way the one Memorial here and there once lists names and names the free names of matches since snuffed out gathered into one symbolic fire, the bonfire of America a fire of books to make one great book, one torch on one outstretched hand reaching to one sun's heaven. Foghorns mourn. Only white to see: whitewash. The shadows are the dangers, the real. On the deck grasping the clammy railing glasses off, hat on, trying to peer out it is the sound of the engines the thrum thrum thrum through stationary feet that tell the passenger with a shudder we are moving. a fish jumps, a splash tells us. a storm irrelevantly far away and already dead still sends its waves they beat against the ship the past rocking us again. The beauteous skyline's the color of soot ashes heaven bound unwrap the turbaned scarf to the funneled breeze the channel has to be made red right returning red lights hot nights stop lights burning plead allegiance and for mercy and a proper ferry bang. Acres of leather-eating pavement slide under my projections I who have a head to the sky and in the echo chamber celestial words spoken from these and those steps brandish the power of the bounce, punch the ears let the truth be a lesson for you, ringing across the city pealing over the land from window to sewer to school from banks and rivers to ATMs, wherever the pause is in doubt words garnered from the wisdom of the free who wander the catacombs by night freely with mouths chewing fast and the smell of blood sometimes it leaks out despite the sand in bags some scream for absolutes in the mirage of cars and some laugh as the river's waves catch them as if riding on top they were surfers not in danger of the body slam to the asphalt mat, as if to worry is to take the whole thing too seriously. I get a sense from the spray salt to wake me up of a city under sail or steam or men grimly abreast of the statue fellow travellers, not too close I get a sense away from street anarchy of a ship of state purposeful between sleeping lands forging like a smith or god through this glut of a bay where fresh water dies and the open ocean harsh and free begins. Colin Wolfe is a poet and teacher in an American inner city high school. Here are some more poems of his to read Or you can write to him at ColinCW@compuserve.com Florida Tapestry by Colin Wolfe Ricochet by Colin Wolfe Today's Situation
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