Friday 25 January 2008

Notes from a small boat by Kate Burrows

Sweeping from darkening skies
come fisher bats gulping
young piranha in the gloaming
consumed in a rush of algae ripe in
fresh water

the
Symphony of cicadas and frogs
drown my thoughts
pushing them to Amazonian depths
to asphixiate in primordial mud.
Chaos of Times Square and the Roman Coleseum
collide on a hand-hewn boat

Our engine stopped.
One paddle for eight.

Dusk shifts to night
draining sunrise from my cells
to replace lightness with the
anaconda spirit within.
I become the river and the
river is the night.


Kate Burrows, New Jersey, USA

7 comments:

Crafty Green Poet said...

Kate Burrows is a graduate student in sociology and writes poetry to break the boredom of academic reading and writing. She shares creative space with Deb Scott
at Stoney Moss.

paisley said...

a piece that holds out great inspiration to us all... thank you for posting it here.....

susan said...

Beautiful, Kate.

Anonymous said...

I thought your readers may be interested in helping with this poem?
http://www.miodestino.co.uk/lovepoem.php

Anonymous said...

So evocative...

Cynthia said...

kate -

wonderfully lush, soft and low
and melancholy, the fragrance
of the seawater envelopes me.

draining sunrise from my cells...
a beauty of a line, a thought.

cynthia

WH said...

Great compression if imagery, and the last lines are magnificent. Perfect ending.