Fenwick Island
I wish you were here,
for you would understand
how the confident stars
can move this night
to companionable pity,
unwholesome as it is,
how the imperishable sea
masquerades its self
in a pattern of breakers
too lengthy for mind,
how even the sand
is surely alive,
and how the clouds,
cheery and innocent,
accept they are clouds,
and pride is less
than sand or vapor,
so why don’t I?
Drunk on ourselves we’d
demand of the darkness
with dark laughter,
“Who is our Mother
in this heaving
immovable sea?”
O, the Europeans
would surely snicker
were they to watch
from across the waves
as we ask, “Why?”
Why do we carve
our silly hearts
into the beach
to proclaim to ourselves
that nothing’s right,
even as now
a tide comes in
and the Moon rises,
redeeming night?
for John Hartsock
A Surprise Snow
It settles through the night,
Inching across Northwest.
So now a dampening spark of white
Veneers the taupes and darks.
Can’t be heard, the drones
Of cars coated with flakes.
Let go! the covered city groans
And hopes to just roll over.
From being the safest path,
The frozen walkway quits,
A vow broken without wrath:
Every thing is open
To the slipperiness—
Of rumored deity,
Of unforetold seraphic-ness,
Of gripping light and cold.
Comes the cheerful part,
As pondering such sublimities,
My muffled self, so shy of heart,
Slogs to the car, and smiles.
Washington, D.C. NW
January 15, 2024
Patric Pepper, a retired process engineer, holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Maryland. He has published three chapbooks, including Everything Pure as Nothing, Finishing Line Press, 2017, and a full length collection, Temporary Apprehensions, winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Poetry Prize, 2005. He has volunteered for many small press endeavors including the Bethesda Writer’s Center, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Broadkill River Press and Splendid Wake. With his wife, Mary Ann Larkin, he cofounded a micro press, Pond Road Press, which has published 15 books and chapbooks to date, including Tough Heaven: Poems of Pittsburgh, by Jack Gilbert. His work has appeared most recently in Backbone Mountain Review, Gargoyle, The Northern Virginia Review, and online at Full Bleed, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Mid-Atlantic Review. Pepper moved with his wife from D.C. to North Truro, Massachusetts in 2022. Both remain active in the D.C. literary scene.
Featured image in this post is, “FenwicklightApril08” by Mx. Granger, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
