The waves bend
for shuffling, send
a full pack of cards,
one by one onto the shore.
The tide’s hand sweeps
up all loose change
into the sea's deep
pocket and throws
the dice of pebbles
out. I pick one up
and take my chances
with The Bermudian
Sand Dollar to bring
the return of memory
back home when I feel
I have lost everything.
I bet on the push,
pull of emptying, filling.
The churning rhythms
that turn a poem
into a small hard shell.
-----
Nancy Anne Miller was born in Bermuda and has a MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. Her poems have previously featured in St. Somewhere and have appeared in Edinburgh Review, Stand, Haiku Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Journal of Caribbean Literatures, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Via, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review and The Cordite Poetry Review among others. She was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 2008 and organized and read in Ber-Mused the Bermuda Festival Poetry Event for Bermuda's 400th Anniversary.
3 comments:
I like this a lot Nancy (or is it Nancy Anne?) Reminds me of Walcott, how he could sustain a metaphor for twenty stanzas. I look forward to reading more of your work!
Thank YouSummer!I teethed on Walcott.To this day I can rememember flying into Bermuda reading'Midsummer' and just rejoicing to find island subject matter in such exciting and capable poetry.
I also have enjoyed your painting for 'April'. You captured the shimmering heat which our islands have, and you gave just enough detail to the portraits.What you left out made me more interested in the characters.I'm glad you are stateside and doing such good things.Nancy
At first I was unsure of how I felt about the line/stanza breaks, but upon a second and third reading I really enjoyed the way each idea flows into the other, and yet remains constant. I also really like the fact that certain stanzas are able to stand on their own, and yet are still quite obviously parts of a greater whole. This is very well crafted work.
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