Long, thin-necked, gray crane
lifts un-mapped boulders from depths
un-fathomable.
Blue-green ‘gainst slate sky,
purposefully advances
the gas-filled tanker.
Weak, clear waves wash and
wash a bobbing buoy. Drops freeze,
forming icicles.
Friday, January 16, 2009
In the Harbor
Posted by Pat Trombly at 10:27 AM
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2 comments:
A depiction, you might have guessed, of Boston Harbor – the middle stanza about the LNG tanker is in fact the view from my window. This was going to be much longer with planes landing at Logan, Coast Guard cutters and the rest, but the other stanzas did not work, and it got to be like a photograph with multiple points of interest: busy. And a longer poem would have exceeded blog etiquette and I want people to scroll down to the one about the cold winds, which I very much liked.
Though there is tremendous natural beauty in Boston Harbor, though it is clearly a more man-altered environment than most, thanks to the area’s expert marine contractors and terminal infrastructure. I focused on making the unnatural seem natural, and giving personality to the inanimate, by assigning each a sense of purpose and not directly mentioning the people involved in the objects’ function, and by maintaining a steady pace and balance.
The phrase “wash and wash” is intended to show rather than state the repetition of the waves.
I wonder what it would look like if Winslow Homer were around to paint a harbor-scape in the modern day?
There's a coincidence. I once wrote an envirnmental poem about a yellow crane. It was written from the point of view of a crow who thought the yellow crane intruding in his woods was a giant bird. It contained the line "a human being is already grappling with the controls".
The gas-filled tanker advancing "purposefully" is suspiciously sinister.
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