Three Poems by Dah

Myth

The sea does not call
Myth
Another
Low tide is food
Air caresses
Pliable

A ripple knows nothing
dissolves
The thinnest puddle of clouds
reflections

Tracing sand with a finger
I wish upon a secret
Truth
Always
Nothing else



Empty Seat

Along the deserted coast
very little lingers:  shells, tortured rocks
sand dollars of no value
Light shrinks inside the breakers
where waves come to shore
to loiter in the sand
to hold the flickering light

A web of wind tangles the mist
into clouds,
rustles the feathers of sleeping gulls

I am silent, the sea thunders.
My solitude, filled with memories
of things that cannot be repaired.
A crowded emptiness
comes out of hibernation,
a storm brews in darkness.

Late afternoon wears gray scars,
the sky is soiled with thin smog
I am silent, listening for the wind
There is nothing but the snap of waves
against the comatose cliffs

I take an empty seat in the sand.
Nothing changes.  Even here
sitting along the beginning of life
nothing changes

The routine between waves and wind
is their habit, their hope
yet both need different directions

still, it is hard to feel alive
while the world suffocates.
It is hard not to notice
when earth clutches my feet
and the air is speechless.



Forgotten Cattails

I enter the solstice
to hear snow falling
where winter leads the way
to a short-light-distance

Along a childhood memory
snow labored painfully
sweeping the landscape
with heavy shoulders
of white surrender

It seemed a great distance
from Grandmother's house
to the barn
where the icy sky
bellowed a deep freeze
over shivering fields
of forgotten cattails




Dah's most recent book is The Translator from Transcendent Zero Press.  His first three books are from Stillpoint Books.  Dah's poetry has been published by editors from the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, China, Philippines, and India.  His poems recently appeared in Lost Coast Review, Recusant, The Cape Rock, River & South Review, Acumen Journal, Sandy River Review, Stone Voices Magazine, The Linnet's Wings, and Diverse Voices Quarterly.  Dah has been nominated for the Pushcart by the editor of Transcendent Zero Press.  He lives in Berkeley, California where he is working on the manuscripts for his fifth and sixth books.  Visit:  www.dahlusion.wordpress.com