A Jurisdictional Tiff
Even paced exiting into the irregular,
dark marks the last least surface,
an incongruous resident’s hacking cough
short-circuits each breath.
Such reassurance as there is,
picking larkspur in mid-winter,
two-stepping through miasmal temporality,
capturing handfuls of a heavy surf.
Covered in seaweed, crowned with sunlight,
I watch small arthropods disappear down a damp sandy beach,
the undulating reaches dwindling to a horizonal edge,
imagining a sapphirine octopus,
unreal dream drops of blood,
the rest clawing into view.
The night and its melodies
addressing tidal remains
which only the repetitive concludes
sifted through a syntactical mesh,
as a recent newscast bequeaths
more than unlikely stories
a maverick scholar seeks to refute,
while, just as unlikely, a cat on a window sill moves,
as a mouse in a corner hunches, absolute and still.
The newest newscast tells
of a possible intrigue
between people I have never met,
in a city I have never been to.
Frank C. Praeger is a retired biologist who lives in the Keweenaw which is a peninnsula that juts out from the northwest corner of the Upper Pennisula of Michigan into Lake Superior. His poetry has appeared in various journals in both UK and USA.