The Solitary Light
Fanny Mae Salter
the last woman lighthouse keeper
in the United States
No one knows night as she does.
Except, perhaps you. Adrift.
Fog spirals and a low tone.
Have you, too, been lonely
in a crowd?
Room of voices and the only space
to be safe is in the song. She returns
to the round room.
Circling light. Anchor of night.
Wave against rock. Dawn
the osprey calls the day open.
Take care. One storm will teach you
the limits of your lungs. Creak as the last
ounce of air leaves. Your ribs expand and retract.
That song: wave sung, alluring.
We are caged in ivory, tendon, and a beautiful
blue river. Body, beloved, even until death.
Whisp of sea grass glows rust gold in day’s last light.
Her heart, a room the wind remembers.
ARRs poetica
In DC the metro system
has a few ways of telling us
a train is arriving. My daughter
counts the ways. 1: Lights
flash at our feet and across
the treacherous tracks.
2. A wind picks up
from the tunnel. Stale air
woosh-ing. 3. A squeal
and that other light, singular
barreling. The last light
someone saw, yesterday.
There’s a fourth way
to know. A digital board
tells us minutes
or sometimes:
DEL or ARR.
That ARR
is our favorite.
On Talk Like A Pirate Day
someone always takes
a picture from the Metro.
We place our hands up
into the air, curve
one finger to signal
a hook for a hand.
We say “ARRR.”
Why isn’t there
Talk Like a Poet
Day. Would we
have to rhyme all day
maintain iambic,
meter ourselves?
If I have had any influence
over my students
than no, we wouldn’t
be constrained by rhyme.
How else do you talk like a poet?
Exclaim, wonder
awe. This flower
the one that seems
impossible
so large, such a bell
to come from the tiny
starred buds climbing
the rest of the plant.
I stop my bike.
I am alone. All
I see is the furred butt
of the bumblebee
until it comes out
seems to see me
and whirs its wings
away.
Lara Payne lives in Maryland. Once an archeologist, she now teaches writing at the college level, to veterans, and to small children. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner in the MovingWords Competition and was placed on buses in Arlington, VA. Recent poems have appeared in the Delmarva Review and online with SWWIM Daily.