Prayer for the shoreline after a violent windstorm

Ellen LaFleche

 

The androgynous lobster with its swiveling hips and pugilistic paw,
bless it as it creeps back into the spit.

The jellyfish flopping like battered ghosts onto a mattress of seaweed,
bless them as they sleep.

And the littleneck clam that crash-landed in its flying saucer,
its nude body floating in a lather of salt.

Bless the sand, its edges wind-stroked into fringe,
that white expanse rippling like a rabbinical prayer shawl.

The syringes churning through the breakers,
the insulin needle pinwheeling a starfish to the dock.

The retreating wave climbing down a staircase of rocks,
the delicate whisper of its bridal lace.

And the wind-polished sea glass, smooth as extracted cataracts,
the dull glint of those sightless lenses.

Bless the heron bending and stretching its scoliatic spine,
the ten-legged crab squirming in its beak.

And the homeless man stumbling in bare feet through the surf,
sea foam fizzing around his ankles like digestive juices.

His plastic bucket filled with soda-can tabs,
the severed claws in his pocket, the starfish in his palm.

That man, the stench of cocaine smoke in his lungs,
bless him flopping onto a mattress of seaweed.

Bless him as he sleeps.

 

 

Ellen LaFleche won the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize (2012), the New Millennium Poetry Prize (2012, shared with Jim Glenn Thatcher), and the Philbrick Poetry Prizen (2011). Her chapbooks include Workers Rites (Providence Athenaeum Press), Beatrice (Tiger’s Eye Press) and Ovarian (Dallas Poets Community Press.) She is the assistant judge of the Sports Prose Contest for winningwriters.com.

 

[printfriendly]