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