Richard Shaw is a poet residing in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in numerous journals both in the United States and abroad. He is the author of, The Orchard House (Antrim House Books, 2019).
Mid-Ocean
impressions from quarantine
Exquisite
simplicity
being adrift at sea
mainmast in pieces
rudder lost
all to the deep
land is memory
captain’s diary
recording nothing but skies
whitecap spray
whispers
names of the drowned
while a sunken
ship’s bell
keens
Clearing II
Our foremost prayer—
let us see through
the reflective surface
of the world
blinkered
as we are
by its sheen
while underneath
large chords sound
as the procession
files by unseen
occasionally
blinding glare fades
and we wake
to ourselves
on a morning
in summer
exquisite melody of rain
springing
out of the leaves
and like fossil records
of ferns
indelibly etched
into ancient cliffs
so this wakening
evanescence
gets inwardly
pressed
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