“Abetted and Imploded” by John Garmon

From our ships
In deep harbors
We are brushstrokes
Collapsing in quicksand
On a seascape canvas

 

Lost in long lines
At ends of breakwaters
Broken and wishful
Dreaming of headlands
Across a blue bay
Fresh and awakened

 

Anchors dropped
No sonnets to save us
We trounce imagined foes
We’re never going to kill
Their juices mix
In the sea’s wet silence

 

Morning wind blows hard
In a dawn without sunrise
Clouds too heavy to break
We are self-consciously
Humbled by our sails
Bearing maps leading
To future landfalls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Garmon is a writing assistant at the College of Southern Nevada. He has been writing and submitting for 60 years, and his poems have been in Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Paintbrush, The Texas Slough, New Mexico Humanities Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Radius, West, and many other magazines.