I want to thank my dear friend, Michael McCulloh, whom I have known for nearly 40 years, for contributing three poems to this concluding section of my cycle, Seas of the Moon. They are: The Sea of Von Humboldt, the Sea of Smith, and the Sea of Moscow, which he graciously volunteered when informed that I was having difficulty writing for these three particular seas. Given the challenging and problematic titles which he had to work with, I am thrilled by the quality of his writing and gratefully welcome it. I was at last inspired to devise a poem for The Sea of Moscow by his winning example, and have composed an antiphon to his rendition.
Sea of Von Humboldt
From the Sea of Von Humboldt
The sky squints back at itself
Mirrored in a monocle. Clouds,
Thunder's boot-heels, click together,
Hail-scraped, rain-polished, blacker than black.
Strict, erect lightning strikes
Reverberate in thin, lurid lines
Like dueling scars across
Its impassive face...
By Michael McCulloh
.............
The Sea Of Smith
Emptying endlessly
Its chlorinated stream
Into pools gouged out
Of suburban landscapes:
Cleansing away
The accumulated pee
Of six-year-olds, the
Iridescent shimmer
Of sun-tan lotion,
Struggling bugs,
The occasional drowned
Rat, the Sea of Smith.
By Michael McCulloh
.........
The Sea of Moscow
Unto itself, the Sea of Moscow
Has little meaning: Neither
East nor West, impossibly
North, ridiculously cold,
Framed, in memory, by
Axe-hewn dwellings where
Peasants live among
Livestock and boil cabbages.
For the present, a mere
Brief drowning of life.
Yes, opera, bitter prose,
Strong drink: all the same
Brute ring of axes,
Brute finesse…
To the Western eye,
The Sea of Moscow,
Is a pure mirage,
A shimmering skyline
Of barbaric towers, receding
Forever beyond the horizon,
Fading from the sight
Of dying armies
As they themselves
Dissolve upon its shores.
By Michael McCulloh
...............................The Sea Of Moscow
Empty and abandoned
As the day Le Grande Armee' entered,
This sea set ablaze in an arson of moonlight,
Burnt down to lunar waste.
A mudded field of a war-scorched landscape
Bearing banners of waves lifted in valiant gusts...
The heaving aspirations of multitudes, generations
Of peasants, workers, and soldiers at a delirious march
Upon a sea like a hammer
Upon a sea like a sickle
A cold, autocratic wind lashing its freezing surface,
Whipping up lunar memories of
Wars and revolutions,
Frozen memories of sheer, naked,
Human survival.
The enduring soul of the people
Heard in lunar echoes of Russian composers,
Heard in lunar echoes of Russian composers,
In the vast resonation of martial anthems
And the aires of old folk songs
That spin with the moon,
Dancing and singing, drunk on the aethers.
Beside tides of perpetual revolution,
The Sea of Moscow perseveres like a Russian
And carries on
Riotously
...................
Sea of Islands
In sonorous voices of archipelagos
The horizon sings
The emanation of islands.
Rhapsodies of undraped shores sounding
In a symphony of waves that sweep
The glowing expanse of moonlit beaches.
Undressed by orchestrations of wind,
Moonlit bodies of songful haven
Rising nakedly from the deep,
The Selene brilliance of vast ensembles
Of virtuosi coasts conducted by the moon
Their performance of this fantasia
A music of paradise unveiled,
Basking innocently in tides of peace.
Remote geographies of lunar music-
A harmonic caprice
Through the hidden island coves
Of the moon.
An uninhabited paradise
Dashed by one long crescendo of surf,
This seascape emanating on full moon nights to Earth
Its glow welcome harbor after long, hard passage
For weary voyagers reconciled at last to terra firma,
Discovering peace and stable footing here
In these isles of the moon.
.................
Eastern Sea
An alluring glow
Bathes the oriental hemisphere
Of the moon.
Bizarre shores
Of exotic, lunar domains,
Their forbidding interiors
Shunning probing, foreign eyes.
Celestial kingdoms
Of Mare Orientalis
Stretching enigmatically through millenniums
Of imperial moonlight
Across this mysterious sea
Waves of daring caravans and caravels
Venturing far every night
Into the unknown.
Waves of exploration, exchange, and assimilation
On these distant shores,
Bearing back through eddies of time
Rare treasures;
Oceanic volumes of silk, spice, incense, and perfume,
And oceanic volumes of the Dharma.
In this sea the vast, ancient influence
Of the East upon the West
And the West upon the East
Merges auspiciously
In one mysterious, oceanic, lunar current.
Its scrolls of waves
Translated and disseminated
In sincere dialogues
Of confluence
Upon these rich, spiritual shores,
Transmitting esoteric truth
As they dissolve.
....................
Sea of Waves
Dynamic, amatory surface-
Wind aroused waves
Of a voluptuous sea
Intertwined for thousands of miles,
Building passionately.
Amorous swells
Steadily reaching completion,
Intensifying and heightening,
Driven onward
By carnal impulsion...
As ravishing winds
Kiss the lips of waves...
The singular, exceptional face
Of each beauteous curl
In surrender to the wind,
Together,
Accomplished and perfected
At an arcing crest.
A cascade of climaxes
Convulsing in a flash
Of utter upheaval,
An oceanic orgasm
Of glorious realization
Drowning stunned beaches.
Wave after erotic wave
Exploding on torrid shores,
Their long journey to ecstasy
Consummated in a spasm of glowing scud
That expires back into the sea.
And the moon, too
Seizing these tides, passionately
Taking them in the exigency
Of her inescapable lust
And thrusting them with animal intensity
Onto billow kissed shores-
Here the waves lie undone,
Transported in orgasmic reverie
And unfastened of their form,
Their naked essence
Writhing in the surf..
A tryst of moonlight
And amorous tides
Tumbling with virile winds
This extravagant coupling in
Revolutions of coition,
Insatiable and endless-
The moon, the wind, and the waves of this sea
Consummating their uninterrupted lust
On these exhausted sands.
Fulfilled and contented,
Melting in afterglow into the lunar aethers
......................
Sea of Clouds
High clouds: cirrus, cirrocumulus, and cirrostratus.
Middle clouds: altocumulus, altostratus-
Low clouds: stratus, stratocumulus-
Multi-level clouds: cumulus, cumulonimbus, and nimbostratus..
A vast buildup
Of these great, gamboling masses
Of every wisping, barreling shape
Breaking in waves forever across this sea.
Its oceanic basin of misty brume
Floating upward into lunar atmospheres
Upon dancing winds,
Circulating and mixing
In tumultuous sea-currents,
A myriad of billowing, random shapes
Spilling across the face of the moon,
Her light illuminating their ephemeral surface.
....................
Sea of Vapor
Across a vaporous expanse
The revolutions of the moon like a breath,
An exhalation of spirit
Condensed in spacious waves of ether,
Subtly drifting
Across a whorling, prismatic surface.
Moon-lit vapors
Rising inside an alembic
Of nebulous sea,
A swirling, salty haze
Steaming off the churning deep.Fleeting, iridescent mists
Of lunar fog
Embracing the flowing margins
Of melting, gossamer shores,
Their vague contours
Awash in waves of ether.
Shore and surf together
Distilled back into a rarefied sea,
Pervading the night
In intoxicating fumes of moonlight.
................
Foaming Sea
The silent foam of the sea
Softly congeals in the moonlight.
Yeast of imagination,
It comes to the roaming surface and rides
A fantasy of surf-
Fluff, spray, and scud,
The substance of a dream Pillowed on the cream of waves,
Traveling in an efflux of dazzling moonlight...
A wash of spin-drift images,
A welter without words,
The surreal foam that floats
Far out upon this sea
Drifting iridescently
Upon its supernal depths-
The refined salt, the apogee of art,
Carried on the quantum of foaming waves
That collapse on lunar shores,
These radiant sands where distant realities surge,
A tumult of possibility splashing
In a vagary of shapes,
The mind a lather
Inside this frothing, luminous surf
Undifferentiated from rays of vast moonlight.
...................................
Postludium
Seas that grow in sound of silent, howling that pounds the Earth
In their spinning flames, smoke of cat's eyes
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