Monday, September 22, 2014

Michael Keshigian- Three Poems


BLUE GHOST

Her eyes
and the lake
are his memories,
cobalt images of clarity
and purity, running deep.
It was in this cove
where the black spotted loon
dove head first
into the heart of blue,
attracting the tender pulse
of her affection
inciting her
to follow the creature
into the watery sweep
tangled with milfoil
that snarled her hair
while the checkered fowl
dutifully hunted
for its young.
Her blue eyes wide,
blended eventually
with the ripple of current
that swept beneath the surface.
He visited that cove often,
thereafter,
especially those days
where the sun’s gleam
highlighted the blue ghost
within the restless ripples
that will forever
wrap him in riddles.




CEMETERY SILENCE
 
He stood in front of the headstone
marking his father’s grave
under a maple tree
that shaded the parcel
reserved for his mother.
“I found that twenty
you sent me,” he whispered,
“found it in the leaves
next to the curb during my run
the day after
we moved you here.
I asked for a sign
and you thought of
dropping a twenty on me.
I knew it was yours,
all the serial numbers
matched your birth and departure date,
never mind the letters, all T, S, & K.
Money is what drove you,
but at least, this time, you answered.“
He concluded the one-sided conversation,
hoping for another sign,
but all that followed
was a long silence,
one that encompassed all the gravestones
and the rows of dead they marked.
He kneeled, got closer to the granite slab,
pressed an ear against it
as if to block the deafening quiet
that enveloped his surroundings.
Still nothing, cemetery silence,
the most disarming silence of all,
so silent, he could hear the still air breathe.




MAROONED

Trapped below deck and under the sea,
turbulent waves overwhelm
his minute navigational craft,
settling in translucent blueness.
Inches away, the V-shaped bow
separates the cuddy
from the crush of tidal rush
and salt water foam.
He laments in loneliness,
aches for warmth and contact
while his lips blister
and cannibalistic enzymes
induce hunger, preventing sleep.
Hours pass,
the sea plays hide and seek,
a deadly game, he fears,
that nears conclusion.
A vague reality engulfs
his famished brain,
silently screaming
to escape this nightmarish voyage
and once again,
feel the solidity of earth.
But the ocean toss
slowly dilutes his sensibility
and again he relinquishes
to the rhapsodic flow
which has foiled
this voluntary exile for solitude
and the ability to contemplate
without diversion.
Marooned in this casket cabin
without friend, foe or folly,
he dreads expiration
without notice to the salty torrents
of sun drenched froth
and realizes in haste
the deadly nature of perfection and seclusion.

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