I write a lot of poetry. Have been since I was a kid. Once I sent a slew of poems written in pen on scraps of paper to one of my favorite magazines, The New Yorker. Yes, this idiot 15-year-old sent a stack of poetry to the major magazine in the country, assuming that of course they'd publish it all. The sweet, kind gentleman who got my poems sent them back to me with a kind rejection. As he pointed out to me in the hand-written rejection he sent me in the big manila envelope in which he returned my poems, "Please don't send a little lady's envelope with your submissions in the future." But I didn't know the self-addressed stamped envelopes were for the return of my work - I thought they were for the CHECK :)
Oh well, live and learn.
This poem was published as Sea Oats, April 2011, Oklahoma Review, Cameron University, for Fall 2011 online edition.
Sea Oats
Looking like wheat from a blasted environment,
sea oats hang onto the edge of the ocean,
closer now than it has ever been,
buffeted by the winds of five hurricanes
eroding the beach away
down to the roots of sea oats.
Young girls, not knowing their function,
admired their simple refrain,
redolent of baby’s breath and cane chairs,
straw hats and faces sans makeup,
sans artifice, hairy legs and armpits,
flowing skirts and home-made shirts,
jeans patched so many times they fit like
butter slathered on the tiny thighs
of young girls walking the beach
picking sea oats at their start of their lives.
We put them in Mateus bottles.
The wine sucked, but the bottles were beautiful
and they decorated our barren homes
until we could paint the walls a brighter color
add pictures from our torn schoolbooks,
Monet, Picasso, and the cheery lie of Van Gogh.
You had to know that road went nowhere
to avoid being fooled by the colors.