®

Today's poem is by Susan Edwards Richmond

Homage, Orby Head

When I can go no farther, and the maps are all
blue, I count the birds at the end of the world:
swooped down from their russet watch-towers, long,
low lines of silhouette stoop to the waves,
piebald buoys bob in the lea of rocks,
plump-bellied gourds with red waders on troll
the bricky stone. Arms clasp over pulled up
knees, salted by the wet perimeter
of light. Gathering in the past, shapes stream by,
great auk, Labrador duck, and Eskimo
curlew in venerated waves, all plucked,
bloodied, and damned. Shingles crack in the tide's
ruddy contusions. We have everything
to lose, and have again and again.



                after Seamus Heaney



Copyright © 2017 Susan Edwards Richmond All rights reserved
from Before We Were Birds
Adastra Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

Home 
Archives  Web Weekly Features  About Verse Daily  FAQs  Submit to Verse Daily  Follow Verse Daily on Twitter

Copyright © 2002-2017 Verse Daily All Rights Reserved