Boys paddle into the surf
on their boards, waiting for the swells
which will whip them up to that stance
where they’re poised between dark
cobalt sky and the quivering lip
of a wave— Above, a helicopter hovers
and for a moment I teeter, too,
on the edge of this spectacle:
green and blue umbrellas raised
in defense against the sun,
oiled bodies glistening on the shore;
far off in the distance,
the silhouette of a boat slim
as a needle poised on the water’s surface.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.
Terrific poem. Reading this on July 4th. Perfect comment on the day
Thanks, Mary! Hope you had a good 4th.