Traffic on Narragansett Bay

Painting by Edward M. Bannister


Traffic on Narragansett Bay

Moving like a confident lover moves,
the unending ebb and flow of the tide
runs neither toward or away from things,
affording a translucent,
deathy-deathless scene
as Kenneth Burke would phrase it.

Prudence, patience and hope like islands
in our mortal streams must never be lost
site of if we're intent on a redemptive
theme and wish all well

but it's early in the morning
and the sound of the water lapping
at the rocks seems to echo
the devil's laughter claiming all's well
with America; the flag flies free.

In a time of conflict,
conflict is inevitable.
Once Truman dropped it everyone wanted it
and we surrendered to the inevitability
of it all.

Now, this water takes on a more ominous
tone like the voice of a child
crying, wailing its fountain of stanzas
needing neither symbol or metaphor

to impinge upon the sound of its
disjunctive purity and I am lost
in name and station,
not knowing how to proceed.
In all the universe can there be

anything more mortal than a creative act
or more underwrought in its
fearsome simplicity?


Scott Malby

Posted over on A Little Poetry