La Bahía summer sits on the shape of my writing

                                              South of the Border

 

July soaks my writing in symbols

humidity burdens my stanzas

until breezes cool the lethargic engine

and it revs up for a few false starts.

 

The weight of August heat squeezes

words like limes, seeping sharp tangy

juice that shrinks lines, presses on the rush

to finish something not yet said.

 

By September high sea fevers

drench my words, make them sloppy, sluggish

with lots of esses, slippings and slitherings,

then slides into the nothing of October

 

until November blusters gulf breezes

rushing the veranda, trying to blow

my words off the paper,

slamming hows into whats, swirling all

 

into pileups of rear enders along the bannisters,

but inside, lingering confinement stretches

the lines and squelches slow motion poetics,

no place to go makes stanzas long, incurable,

 

demanding an unknown from readers.

Even the elongated cool hides the music in the poems,

erases honeyed loveliness of lyrical lines.

All is well, but nothing is consummated.

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©Sharon Lopez Mooney, "Bahia summer sits on my writing", from Ginosko Literary Journal, Issue #26, Ed. Robert Paul Cesaretti, Fairfax, CA, Spring 2021, print and online: http://ginoskoliteraryjournal.com/images/ginosko26.pdf