Late summer
and a Jack-o-Lantern sky
opens its wide red mouth
to swallow the sun.
Out of the resulting abyss,
voracious black shags
fly seaward to a row of trees
stripped bare by their acidic droppings.
They sit like demon vultures
full of treachery,
a foul gallery of wicked criminals
in trees condemned to die.
Who can deny
this isn’t a bad omen
of things to come upon the world?
Another sign –
the moon hangs like a spectral lantern
carried by a ghastly gravedigger
glumly working overtime.
By its chlorotic light
three boats troll for salmon
but nothing’s biting in the big slop bucket.
Tonight, it makes me think
of the Fisher King
outside his lonely castle
where dead fish and water birds,
debris and plastic bottles litter the shore.
His power and glory have faded
long since swallowed up
by fear, greed, confusion, unbelief.
Stinking algae blooming
from the putrid runoff gathers
toxic green and red around his feet.
No place remains
for him to catch a decent fish
untouched by chemicals or lamprey eels;
His pristine rivers
once full of speckled trout are dammed.
Who can fill the emptiness,
assuage the loneliness he feels?
Who can heal the rottenness at the core
of this, our wounded kingdom?
The good in us still clings to hope
that someone noble will come
to make things brighter, cleaner, bluer, better;
that it will rain;
the spooks will disappear;
the morgue will close its doors
since there are no more victims of Fentanyl;
the dead will rise again
though now it seems the opposite,
that Halloween comes sooner every year.
Bio: Reading widely in the poetic canon has helped me develop a sense of taste in poetry. Some of my favourites are the French Symbolists, W.B. Yeats and great modern poets like Philip Larkin and Elizabeth Bishop. In addition, writing poetry has been one of the joys of my life because as Mallarmé said “beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry”. You can visit me at www.rodspoetryblog.wordpress.com/
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