David Winfield Norman

Sacrifices

 

Lowly do the bonfires

of St. John’s Day smolder,

green gnasts prowling out from their caves

The seawalls bawl,

and you wander away

among the leafy hooves.

The sailors wring their cauls

around their necks like locks,

transparent tongues

that dwale across vagrant

ship calluses, like sirens.

 

When the summer lavender

is tossed and singed

to its oceanic heathen plane,

you will be dragged

across the rocks

and sung to

from the mange of Northern winds

made raucous in the gray.

 

[....]

David Winfield Norman

And when the shadow looms,

broom-heavy and stiff with mooring

from the fireworks strewn starboard,

all the embers fascinating

into coin-bearing serpents,

the virid creeping of wound, teethed vines

of bladderwrack will reap and surge.

Into the white, watery beard

you will go, favorite specter of mine.