provincetown

Provincetown Morning

lillian57 Comments

Quiet resounds here.
Time reined in, schedules disappear.
Low tide reveals sand swirls,
lazy etchings from past eddies.
Once afloat in deep water
languid sailboats rest askew,
moorings draped in dripping sea grass.
Plover chatter creates far-off natural hum
occasionally interrupted by a raucous gull.
Sipping coffee in a slight ocean breeze
my mind wanders,
savoring the serenity of this place.

 

 

I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse today, the virtual pub for poets. Prompt word/s: rain, rein, and/or reign. Folks are invited to use one, two, or all three of these words. The one caveat is the poem must have a positive bent. Come join poets from across the globe — we’re a friendly bunch so would love to have you participate! Pub opens at 3PM Boston time. And yes, I’m in our beloved Provincetown, at the very tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Two glorious weeks in this beautiful place. Photos from our deck. Feet are from a few years back…but others are from yesterday and today. It’s a special place in the off-season. 

Oh Provincetown!

lillian42 Comments

Gulls squawk, shout high pitched squeals,
breaking through the silent calm of early morn.
Waters so still at low tide, there is no lap
as sun glistened ripples lie mute in their beauty.
Are these the sounds of long past voices
altered by time, soaring above your land?

Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill.
Were their bare feet marred by these rock pebbles,
these shards of shell beneath my feet,
tumbled through years of artistic waves?
Indigo waters turn cobalt blue, abut a stark line of sky,
like one canvas piled upon another,
an artists’ easel left for the day.

Muse to Jackson Pollack, Jack Kerouac,
Tony Kushner and Kurt Vonnegut.
Given voice by the calm and eloquent words
writ by Mary Oliver, resident of these dunes,
this town at the very tip of Cape Cod,
crooked arm of land surrounded by sea.

Leave the ocean and stroll into her streets.
See bawdy painted lips and swinging narrow hips,
drag queens, moving costumed forms,
tourists, lookers, art and food aficionados,
hawkers outside beaded doors and lovers of every kind.
Holding hands they strut, saunter, smile and wave.
Sixty thousand revelers by summer’s tides
ebbs to 3,000 who walk quiet snow encrusted streets,
appreciate winter palettes of whites and greys.

Oh Provincetown! Town of complexities.
Pilgrims’ pride rejected, settled by Portugese fishermen
and wives who waited for husbands to return from sea.
So many have claimed you.
So many have walked your streets,
marveled at your cinnabar setting suns,
danced on your sands of time.
And still you offer more.
More palettes of dawn and dusk.
More ocean tides and raucous waves.
More low tides that reveal your under life.
I revel to return again and again.
You hath cast your spell on me.

Our jetty – appears and disappears with the tide

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today, I am hosting and asking folks to write a “travelogue” poem. Take us somewhere! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston (eastern) time. Provincetown is located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In November 1620, pilgrims on the Mayflower landed in the west end of Provincetown and wrote the Mayflower Compact there, before journeying on and settling across the bay in Plymouth. The Governor of the Plymouth Colony purchased the land of Provincetown in 1654 from the Chief of the Nausets for 2 brass kettles, 6 coats, 12 hoes, 12 axes, 12 knives and a box (see wikipedia). Provincetown has been the summer home for many fringe and reknowned artists and writers. Twenty-seven year old Eugene O’Neill produced his first play here in 1916 and spent the next nine years of his life in Ptown.

The Moon

lillian52 Comments

I ran outside that night,
so full of life and excitement.
Imagined your surprise and thought I would see
a grimace,
a crease,
a worried frown.

Someone finally broke through.
Landed. Slammed into you
and stepped into your heart.
Your cold, aloof self,
finally
breached.

And yet I saw nothing new.
Your face unchanged,
seeing me only
as one of many who adore you,
who live and stare each night
beneath your remote reserve.

Thirty-plus years have passed.
I arise more slowly to morning sun,
less sure of my footing,
skin aged and sallow.
I still await the end of day
to feel your face upon my soul.

I peer through clouds within my eyes
and those that skirt your skies.
For I have loved you all these years
even as you appear
and disappear
and appear again.

You my love, care not.
You seem to ignore what I crave.
All I seek these many nights
is some recognition,
some sign,
that we have been with you.

DSCN5662
Full moon over Provincetown. Cape Cod, MA.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse where Grace asks us to write about the moon as if the moon is a person – flesh, sweat and blood. “Describe him or her, and tell us about your moon.”
On July 20, 1969, I was 22, a graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. I’d heard about “the man in the moon” since I was a young child. You can “see” his face in the full moon, made by shadows and craters visible to the naked eye. On that July night at 9:56 PM, I watched my tiny portable television screen as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. I remember staring in awe and then immediately running outside, standing on the sidewalk and looking up at the moon, as if I could see some sign up there! And I remember thinking: tonight there really is a “man in the moon.”   Dverse opens at 3PM EST.  Come join us!

 

Glisten

lillian25 Comments

Footprints disappear
in cool damp sand ridges
as low tide changes course.

Sun light
does a glisten dance,
as waters disappear in clouds.

We share our solitude,
grateful for the off-season
to rediscover love.

IMG_2699

Written for dVerse where Victoria asks us to rewrite an older poem and add some imagery. The original Glisten is the first poem I posted when I began this blog in March 2015.  Photo:  Provincetown, on Cape Cod.

Dunes of Time

lillian18 Comments

Sand granules shift in shoes
sweat stained belly, dripping hair.
Up and over and down and up
and over and dune after dune.
Some with coarse stubble grass
some ridged from recent winds,
steps sink deeper every step.

Alone with memories,
faces shift like heat shimmers
mirages in my exhausted mind.
One more ridge.
Burning feet stop cold,
pupils dilate, tear ducts long dry
begin to burn, arms lift in shock.

White ripples rise up enmasse,
cacophonous beating wings above my head
thousands swerve. Amorphous sound wave
disappears where blue meets blue.

I stumble, slip down this last sand mound
shocked by their intensity, here then gone.
Lying in cool waters, face to glaring sun
I understand now. They are all gone.

stockvault-way-too-many-gulls108765

Published in response to Quickly’s Winter Doldrums: focus on a remembered moement when you seemed to enter into another sense of time.

Sunday Seaside

lillian5 Comments

Sight line ends
where water creases sky.
Rhythmic waves,
the breath of wind.
Gulls glide by in slow motion.
Clouds first pink,
turn violet grey.
Glisten paths upon the sea.
Surely I am in church today,
my knees upon the sand
seeking intercession
in genuflection,
closer my God to thee.

IMG_0695_SunFLare-AM_9-30-LILL                           far heart                    close heart

Photos from beach by our deck in Provincetown. Assignment from my September 21 Day Challenge was to write a poem using the strategy of litany (listing) and end with a longer sentence, with a stronger meaning.