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Read more poems by C. Dale Young: C. Dale Young Poems at Poetry X.

The rampant cane fields rife with disease,
the ocean carrying only shells to the altar,
a beach left to penitents, their easy sweat
cursing the sand that brought an increase
in Tourism.  Could this scene be altered?

Next to a pile of seaweed, the ubiquitous gull 
ate from a plate of dead things, rejections.
Up in the cane fields, sitting beside an anthill,
a young and foolish version of myself had once hid,
scratching in the dirt his tired testament, his will.

To my firstborn, I would leave the sea; the sand,
to my future love.  But my father’s grim shovel
I would bury under a palm tree, under tendrils
of clematis, its showy blooms filled with poisons.
One should not be alone in the cane fields, its evil

captured in its wide paragraphs, its evil refined
like sugar.  At a resort staggered down a cliffside 
to yet another beach, I sat one morning studying 
the flowers of the crown-of-thorns, its bloodletting 
worthy of an entire chapter in a book

on phlebotomy.  In the air, I smelled privilege.
I remembered the cane fields.  The years rewind
so easily for one who is a visitor in his own home.
The sea silences these false lines and mocks me 
with promises of splendor and bright fish, reminds me 

I am a fisherman, casting an empty hook.


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Added: 24 Feb 2003 | Last Read: 16 Oct 2008 3:01 AM | Viewed: 1902 times

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