Cape Cod Poetry: The places poets can bring you
This week's poetry winners can bring you to a summer night sparked by fireflies, an enchanted encounter in the shark's domain, or the bombed-out maternity hospital in Mariupol. You don't just read poems. Poets bring you along with every word, every phrase to a place, a feeling, with symbolic power. You and I may be reading the same thing, but odds are these poets will take us to different places and that's where the magic happens.
Elizabeth Fletcher’s poems have appeared in "Book of Matches, Spaceports & Spidersilk," "Tiny Seed Literary Journal", "Schuylkill Valley Journal," "Ariel Chart" and "Dillydoun Review," among others. She was a 2023 Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Rhysling Award nominee and a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her Philadelphia Inquirer publications include essays on sea turtles and Snowy owls.
Inspiration: Peaked Hill Beach is known in our family as “The Secret Place.” When our two boys were small, we hiked through the dunes to the ocean each summer. It was an adventure to a wild and beautiful place and the high point was swimming. We all go every August. Swimming there holds a special enchantment for me. I’ve tried to capture the sheer delight of it along with my awareness of the risk.
Peaked Hills Beach
By Elizabeth Fletcher
Parabolic dunes rise at my back
heat spirals up from soft sand
The cobalt blue Atlantic shimmers.
I plunge into rolling waves
shoot up, gasping with pleasure
Icy saltwater streams over my skin
sluicing the heat off my body.
I strike out parallel to shore
pull and kick, pull and kick
powering, held up by clear green sea.
I ride the waves, and ride again
turn underwater somersaults,
dolphin flip for the joy of it
A seal pops up
her dark eyes curious,
we’re only strokes apart
floating, for enchanted moments
we are Mer sisters.
The great white hunts here
a silver shadow
unseen, mercurial
beyond my ken,
I shiver.
Cold stings my arms
my legs are numbing -
signals -
but I can’t resist
one more wave ride.
The Great White hunts here
I swim each day in August
For the joy.
***
Anthony Cappo is the author of "When You’re Deep in a Thing" (Four Way Books, 2022), which was awarded an honorable mention in the 2022 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards. His poems and other writings have appeared in "THRUSH Poetry Journal," "Prelude," "The Rumpus," "Yes Poetry" and other publications. Cappo received his M.F.A. in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. His work can be found at anthonycappo.com.
Inspiration: This poem tries to capture the moment when a relationship hits the point of no return. And not in a good way. It was inspired by a long weekend at the beach that happened to fall during a solar eclipse. I somehow hit on the image of the relationship listing like a distressed ship and just went with it from there.
Eclipse
By Anthony Cappo
It was the solar eclipse and we were
listing. Water bursting in as quick
as we could bail it. Exhausted
sailors. We talked of ending or
just taking a break. Spoon out
the ache. Implements too small
to clear the bilge, so we quit trying.
Like knuckles bashing together, we
clashed constantly. Everything I did
annoyed her. Everything she did
shot sleet through my marrow.
Our vista narrowing like the sun, our bond
a sliver of what it was. We went
to the shore to get away, but
that beach town’s charms eluded her.
Our great escape degraded
into an oubliette. We got no rest, but
not from sex—recriminations, gnashing,
thrashing. Our battles moved from bedroom
to boardwalk to beach. Repeat.
The day wasn’t erased, but dusk
mid-afternoon. Colder, windier—
beach umbrellas tumbling, no place
for cover. And then
it was over. Light returned, wind receded.
We got off the beach, took the train
to the city, went our separate
ways. The sun fell—intact—
into the bay.
***
Kathleen Casey, a longstanding member of the Steeple Street Poets, has had her poetry published in books, newspapers and online. A retired teacher from the Barnstable Public Schools, she resides by a river in East Falmouth, where she gains much of her inspiration. In addition to poetry, she enjoys photography, nature, travelling, humor, and reading W.S. Merwin and Brendan Galvin.
Inspiration: On one of those iconic, Cape Cod summer evenings, my friend and I chanced upon hundreds of fireflies flickering along a shrub-lined, dirt road near the beach. We were unprepared for the stunning magic of the scene as we headed home.
Fireflies
By Kathleen Casey
In early evening we walk
with salt stuck to skin
and hair wiry wild
after our swim in the Sound.
Summer humidity
mixes with the scent
of beach roses.
A catbird sings
from somewhere
in thickets and tangles
that border the dirt road—
really a wide path.
Reaching the bend
hand in hand,
we stop mesmerized
in the growing darkness.
Tiny lights,
first one here
then there,
flicker all around us
in a galaxy of stars
mysterious
and magical.
We are transported
as all wanderers
must be
when witnessing
beauty unexpected.
***
Margaret Rice Moir washed ashore on Cape Cod from New Jersey 14 wonderful years ago. She has been writing as far back as she can remember. “Daily notes and recorded thoughts help to process life’s miracles and madness, it’s heartbreak, horror and happiness.” She is currently working on a memoir about caring for a beloved with Alzheimer’s disease.
“On Waking” addresses this awareness, and the duality of never-ending loss and pain amidst so much abundant natural beauty around us.
On Waking II
By Margaret Rice Moir
My first waking thought is sunlight, how it sings its way into my soul,
crowds me where I’m curled under the nameless flowers that spill out
across the thick quilt over knees like sloping banks and toes like tiny ant-hills.
Sing is what sun does best sing.
Then I remember the wars
the shape of the father’s hand pressed against the glass
as the train pulls from the Lviv station and his child’s face becomes
smaller and smaller with each lurch and chug of the heavy engine.
How to stop remembering the mound of unborn life asleep
in the swollen belly of the not-yet mother as the men lift the stretcher
into the waiting car amidst the powder and rubble of the bombed out
maternity hospital in Mariupol.
Shall I close my eyes against the smoking ruins?
I still see the deeply lined face of the old woman, her wheelchair bouncing
on the icy dirt road, snow falling on her headscarf and accumulating
on the shoulders of her shawl-wrapped torso, while the man pushing her chair
stumbles forward.
All I ask for is sunshine, the lost song of our highest aspirations.
I want the sun to blind with its brilliance.
I want that song, the one that only sunlight can sing.
***
Orleans is home for Ginia Pati; her poetry has been shared by WCAI, WOMR, chapbooks/anthologies, and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
Pati’s prior work at the United Nations weaves visceral imagery in many poems; those that are not solely focused on the miracles that abound in our Cape’s natural world. She writes with "Narrowlands" and "Dune Hollow," frequents open-mics; a special hour for WOMR’s "International Women’s Day" and WCAI’s "Poetry Sunday." Print work includes "Prime-Time," "Cape Women" and anthologies including "Shadow & Light."
Inspiration: Each fall the monarchs passing through remind one to honor the cycles of life, both the beautiful and treacherous. I have stood at the edge of the sea, as they arrive by sunset, with an aching weariness to alight safely on the succulence of goldenrod.
Fleeting Gift
By Ginia Pati
In the blessing of this moment
fierce sunlight arrives on monarch wings
Serengeti orange with black haiku
Lifting, flower to flower, gathering nectar
when urgency thrums erratically on late September days
does a spiraling of memory yearn toward Mexico
despite the perilous journey of unknowns
cavorting winds, cold rains, and diminishing food.
Will you dare to lift your wings, into wild currents
of unimagined torn between dazzling vibrance
and long nights beneath faint constellations
would you even dare to lift your wings now, if
you truly remembered the imprisoning cocoon
you once built, in order to transform.
Perhaps you trust the lift of your wings by remembering
the cold earth you once slogged across,
fragrant mold debris where you dragged each
humble worm segment
in order to truly learn the earth.
So many dark secrets spun into your cocoon
golden threads of knowledge and memory.
How much earth delicately clings to each leg
so that you may discover safe landings
in unknown forests so far away.
Can you possibly feel how I honor your
fleeting arrival your urgent departure, yet
sweetest gift, so that I too remember the spirals
of our journeys here on earth.
***
Ron Zweig resides in Woods Hole near Nobska Light. Initially, he did research at MBL followed by a decade at the New Alchemy Institute in Hatchville. Later, he worked for years in Asia on water resources management for United Nations agencies and the World Bank. His broad interest in the arts started in his youth and, regarding poetry, was first influenced by Robert Frost.
Inspiration: A Red Fox frequently traverses my woodland yard. One morning, I encountered his determined stride as he was holding a lifeless squirrel in his jaws. Stopping momentarily, his eye contact with mine and conveyed primal wisdom about his task.
Red Encounter
By Ron Zweig
a fox wry with caution, eyes meproudly maintaining the certainty in his step determined from the freshness of a spring wood hasfirmly clutched in his jaws a limp, recently lifeless squirrel, stillwithin its grayness soon to be reliefa vixen and her four kits hungry, impatient wait to be nourishedfrom his near silent cunning that will upon arrival provide strength and dissipate those pangs with more definitive security assured
suddenly, my being reawakens but this time within his eye, not withoutplacing me in a world of driven passionso elemental and so unknowing, to what I must askis that the primal essence of all we desire and dothink no more
How to submit a poem to the Cape Cod Times
Here’s how to send us your work:
Submit one poem single-spaced, of 35 lines or fewer per month.
Poems cannot be previously published (in print or online).
Deadline for submission is Sept. 1, 2023.
Submit by email to cctpoetry12@gmail.com.
Poems should be free of hate speech and expletives (profanity, vulgarity, obscenity).
In the body of the e-mail, send your contact information: name, address, phone number and title of poem; then, in a Word Doc attachment, include poem without name or any other personal info, so that the poem can be judged anonymously.
Poets not previously published in the Cape Cod Times are welcome to submit a new poem each month.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod poetry winners share everything: pain of loss to fireflies
