Mike Jarman's Dispatches from Devereux

Another poem shamelessly filched from Poets.org. If you are interested in poetry on a daily basis, then I highly recommend signing up for their Poem-A-Day list. They have a good mix of old and new and I've discovered some great work through it. A fine example is today's poem by Mark Jarman. It's absolutely sublime - of herons, egrets, seine nets, the waves. Perhaps alluding to the wetness of burning desire.

Dispatch from Devereux Slough
Fall, 2008
The gulls have no idea.
The distant bark of sea lions gives nothing away.
The white-tailed kite flutters and hunts.
The pelicans perform their sloppy angling.
The ironbark eucalyptus dwells in ignorance and beauty.
And the night herons brood in their heronry like yoga masters, each balanced on a twig.
The world has changed. The news will take some time to get here.

3am. What a time of day! Anyone who has been awake at 3am knows what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant when he wrote, "In the dark night of the soul, it's always 3am, day after day."
In one of the poems called Shorebreak, 3am he writes,

Awake, alone, at the right hour to hear it,
That hush, for all the sleeplessness behind it,
Can lead one, walking wounded, back to sleep.

See the full text of Dispatches from Devereux Slough. It's full of wonderful lines and images, including this last one in the series:

Heaven

When we are reunited after death,
The owls will call among the eucalyptus,
The white tailed kite will arc across the mesa,
And sunset cast orange light from the Pacific
Against the golden bush and eucalyptus
Where flowers and fruit and seeds appear all seasons
And our paired silhouettes are waiting for us.