Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Quincy Troupe


One Summer View In Port Townsend, Washington

For Sam Hamill


soft blue wind caresses ease in off the sound,
the waters cool surface shimmers
blue diamond rare, miles up in the air a trumpet slips
glittering hard licks true & fast, slick as a moment
eclipsed in a wink
	          & quick as a hair-pin turn around,
you’re looking out across the diamond-blue shimmering
to a long low land mass rising & swimming out to sea,
where the blue becomes a darker, deeper blue,

where the land’s end is the brown-green
sandy snout of whidbey island, seemingly swimming—
a whale’s jutting head—out to sea & back over here green leaves
brimming from branches & bushes are hands
waving good bye, good bye,
like farewells of weeping lovers,

everything is serene over here, blue, green & brown, sun
light dappling around edges, hard black masses—
in the shape of shadows—spreading, over which one piercing
bird call tingles, pricks the senses
as it wheels, slices its double-winged comma shape right through
the blue singing, like a solo of miles davis cutting right through
clean to the heart, true as a surgeon’s scalpel,

these moments are a shopping list of natural wonders, beauty,
things we imagined leaping off postcards received from faraway, exotic
places, most times somewhere over there,
		on the flip side of imagination

& then bam! it’s right here, dead center in the blindspot
of a glance, at the edge of where your eyes are looking,
just now, where your vision fell just short

& the moment completely escaped you

© 2000 Quincy Troupe

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