ENVIRONMENTAL POET

 

More than poets on earth

or mourning doves surfacing

on the resonate sky

the shore was more pristine

in my childhood

than we ever imagined now

when in our memorable eye

and the metamorphoses

of our crouched bodies

we look back

over the ocean's tide

which once held us

in its secret language

over the wide space

carrying my memory today

by my freshly painted

orange kayak

with my binoculars

on these gigantic wave ways

to travel amid the sound

of fish and bird

yet in the shadows

of summer's toxicity

amid noisome flesh and blood

of uncaring human beings

who leave things behind

these local yokels or tourists

dropping items in the water

like slippery combs

or napkins, bottles disregarded

from fast food lunches

we are determined

to clean up 

what wastes our time,

to create lines and words

like the clear sunshine

as light overflows on us

in this season to remember

on a discolored Cape.

 

 

 

 

NOBODY LANDS

 

Sea voices

shadow domes of elms

along flooded rivers

on nobody lands,

too early for dawn's escape

perched under the sun

on the last isle,

as bird flight and song

cover a landscape's fluting

opening a map's voyage

to unknown memory,

here with intense fruit

wrapped in berry boxes

on long picnic tables

gathers for its guests

as fibrillating rays wash

on the windward Cape

between sky and dawn

crossing our leafy eyes

on tall wild grass

by dunes

and ditch water sands

of a greensward shore,

far away from everything

except for the glitter

of a deaf time

in all its Fall disguises

taking leaves by shade

in a morning blush

of reddened visibility

from mirrors of nature's

unexpected recognition.

 

 

 

 

RECOGNITION

(in memory

Gunmar Ekelof)

 

Her memory

in permafrost

riding boots

on nameless roads

of a zig zag life

on undated winter

latitudes

awaiting consummate

sunshine

in the absent sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; LeGuepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.