Isle

The shape of a fisherman's face, a blasted red mask of ancient hope,

stonecold to his wife and child, but cradling a fish in his hands and

praying, like an Indian, to the spirit he has just taken.

Prehistoric bluffs cut into the land by the mighty clash —

a high buffer against the wash of lashing waves

and on the other side the half-moon shape of the softsand curving beach

becomes the pink cup that holds the sparkling sea.

And you know a kind hello always hides a blistering whisper.

I fall asleep at night gently rising and gently falling

with the moontide that guides the thin strands of my blood,

and I think of the uncountable spinning islands floating through a universe

long since hardened and splendidly ordered from its loose bubbled beginnings.

I am awakened by a slice of noise, a sparkly crack in the dark air.

I find that a gull, sneering, the most playful of all birds,

has dropped a cold hardclosed shell onto the warm sloping asphalt,

the shards now cutting deep into the soft wet pool of life inside.

 by Lars Trodson