Awakening
janine canan
I
The world is a baby
wrapped in the gauzy fog.
Waves lap the shore,
a million tender voices babbling.
Afar, the lonely horn booms.
II
Walking past the house,
a brown-haired girl pulls on her gloves.
Frost hovers
on the roseless hedge.
Mercury streetlamps stain morning pink.
Crows tumble onto the pearly grass.
III
Waves shrug their shoulders
against the sand.
A lone gull stands on a boulder
sunk deep in the strait.
The sky is a magnificence
of blues and grays and whites.
Bent over the bluff,
an old fir waits for the wind.
Tentative raindrops stroke my face.
And the gull cries --
IV
Crows stomp the roof.
Morning stretches all the way to night --
third eye flaring.
All the birds have come to praise.
Cars, insecure, territorial, growl back.
Cows bury their noses in the endless lawn
where dreams are woven.
And Baby Moon plays peek-a-boo
in the palace of the fir.
Sophia at the Shore
Panting in her thick white coat
ruffled by the churning wind,
she watches gulls dart across the sand.
Turning to see me near,
she licks her shiny black lip
with her long pink tongue, and sighs.
As the waves roll in
under the cloudy blue dome,
she lays down her nose and offers herself to Life.
