The View from Shore

My neighbors' cut lawns
shine like emeralds,

but I raise my blinds at noon
on a green sea. Swells of grass

tumble to my shore. I smile down
on two mourning doves

bobbing in search of seed,
drifting in the current.

Sails of skippers
and fritillaries beat to windward.

On dark days, in flashes,
I've seen the whitecaps

crash the prow of the tool shed
and garden chairs capsize in the blasts.

I live by the green sea,
wading its low tides

or sometimes riding out
like Perseus in a t-shirt,

whom my neighbors pray
will lift a hand at last

and mow its waves flat.

Joseph Chaney
Assistant Professor of English
IU South Bend

POETS on POETRY:

"Poetry, in my view, nourishes the imagination. A poem helps us to see, as if for the first time. In our habitual lives, we don't bother to see, we don't want to see, because it requires effort. It is so much easier to assume that we already know enough, that the world is familiar, and that we have mastered our corner of it. A good poem can wake us up to an unfamiliar world within the world we already 'know.' Poetry is always showing us, in effect, that the world is still being created, that life is still to be lived. It surprises us in the act of becoming."

Joseph Chaney, IU South Bend

Comments: homepgs@indiana.edu

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The View from Shore

Joseph Chaney Assistant Professor of English IU South Bend

POETS on POETRY:

Joseph Chaney
Assistant Professor of English
IU South Bend