BOATS OF JOY
Bringing the story, through most maven eyes
by texture and by grade they coalesce,
grand blooms of spartan exposures gone wrong,
a compromising emerald sea now replaced by brute-black slashing;
the slumping frame of the dock, missing daytime bird squawk,
the courage of sleeping men soon squid-sundered and dragged away:
mended fishing nets piled in seaweed shawl.
The absence of double-sided oily trawler buckets
that come with larger operations.
Betraying nothing in the bob of things,
these boats of joy tied together, swaying in the harbour,
in a crashing whorl that could be mistaken for dance;
by this man of many miscalculations, wandering night
restless in a pairing of different coloured socks.
Unseen pirouettes for the boats that slam together.
The way young love does, blind to all but
a foolish heart.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles