Driftwood

              Were I to ask forgiveness, you'd release
              me, I suppose.  At least, I'd like to think

              you would.  I could deny the liquor, clink
              of ice on ice, a tattered, jaundiced piece

              of lime sunk to the bottom, and the grease
              in fingerprinted stripes around the drink.

              I was not fooled; I recognized the stink --
              vermouth, but served in coffee mugs with geese

              in saturated blue along the side.
              And you, well, you grew saturated, too --

              who wouldn't?  Liquified enough to share
              exactly how despised I was, the tide

              of bile high, the gravity of you
              spat me ashore, then held me burning there.


              Ruth Foley

     

              *         *          *
        

              While You Were Dying in Providence

              I walked the beach, watched seaweed-chunked
              storm waves cough up
              treasures.  Clorox bottle; chipped foam buoy

              rasta striped orange, yellow, green; rope 
              and rope and rope.  Splintered wreck,
              curing driftwood from a different storm,

              buried so the simple curves of hull ribs
              hinted dinosaurs or whales.  A message
              in a bottle, some kid staying with

              his parents at the beach motel, stones 
              rattling against the glass.  Not stones, 
              peanuts.  A bribe to guilt me into

              a reply, stained with stale wine.
              Far easier to stretch back,
              cast the bottle to the waves 

              five times before it sails far enough
              to ride the riptide awhile.
              If not, there are worse things than beach glass.


              Ruth Foley

     

              *         *          *


              about the poems:

              "I spent summers as a child on the beach in Green Hill, Rhode Island, 
              and many of my poems are rooted there.  My memories and experiences 
              all get filtered through the ocean somehow, and make the transition 
              from fact to poetry.  The sea doesn't always make a physical
              appearance in my poems, as in these two, but it is always there 
              nonetheless.  'While You Were Dying in Providence' is about the 
              death of my cousin Eric; 'Driftwood' is more of an amalgam of 
              experiences (not all of them mine)."
     

              Current Issue | Mystic No. 4 Contents |