Nancy: For years I rarely missed a ballet troupe, Boston's gift to my memories.
One Woman/Three Deer On Timber Cove Road
There was a pause
as though they didn't believe in me
saw nothing of a predator
what held them I don't know.
When they turned
finally, without fear, arcing away
their bounds were quicker than thought.
So, not thought then –
some memory
an image.
Swan Lake, or Giselle
the white flicker of their tails
fans, handkerchiefs, feathers
ghosts, dancing away
through dark trunks of trees.
Alan: I love listening to the harbor seals, like heavy-set city folk letting themselves go on a day at the beach. Uncouth but folksy, they seem a world away from The Song of the Seals – or is that just to my effete, earth-bound ears?
Seal Music
In high summer they truck up the bays,
graalching and belching their love songs.
Who can discern the music in this glub,
fancy these zaftigs as husbands or wives?
lords? mermaids? One
whose days are a laying on of oars,
a lonely hauling of lines and nets;
or a saint-like vigil at the harbor’s mouth;
whose veins run more to whisky and longing
or to the endless names of God than simple salt.
The land-lover, the sober lubber,
sees and hears only the plain, indelicate seals.
Let me but catch the amour in these eructions
and I will join you in a splash, no matter how frigid the tide;
then we will belly our days together,
pressing sleek bodies into thick, eclectic staves,
sweetly and flagrantly blubbering each to each.
