PATRICK MEIGHAN
I GREW OLD WITH THE SEA
Sea-foam bursts with droplets of sun
wrung from salt, from a primordial
mist which also was you appearing
and disappearing, like a gull
on waves beyond the fingers of surf.
The sea by its nature is sad, and holds
the fear of drowning in shallows of air.
WHAT IS RIGHT?
The sky is vacant
until you speak “sun.”
I, the dead, awaken,
the blue flows from
out of the blue, and
the morning quickens.
With your sigh clouds
chase shadows. I hasten
to new death, your arms,
a caesura between action
and consequence, hunger
and myth, cull my name
from your unrequited seasons.
EXILE FROM YOUR EYES
It's as if the winter lasted one hundred years
And I was banished to the North
Where snow stings my eyelids,
As if to blind the memory of your eyes,
Astonishingly clear and glacial.
You once walked barefoot through the melting snow
For me, your bared breasts like two new suns.
But that seemed a thousand springs ago.
Today I light the wood stove. Inside
I burn memories like witches.
Patrick Meighan is raising the next big thing in baseball, giving us two good reasons to remember that last name. Patrick teaches a poetry workshop and composition courses in the New Hampshire Community College System. His chapbook, "Jurisprudence," was published in 2014. He is co-editor of "Images from Ruin," an anthology of 9/11 poems, and his poems and reviews have appeared in various online and print journals.