Of Memories by the Sea
Summers and spangled memory-heat rise up from the pavement;
roads of waste and want, the hurt of war and jellied gasoline
dropped from sky machines,
flying between delusions of freedom
and the security of an exceptional god.
It’s their voices distilled from that din of years;
the rubble-speak repeated now by the same cadre of believers
and their urgent end times, revelations and rapture.
Today, little men, rich in hubris, always ask for money;
feebly market unneeded things and politics;
and the women news readers, with painted faces and
wrinkle-free skin in the latest Prada,
wear shirts that defy you not to imagine them naked.
While the last genocide or child-murder
becomes the lead subject for debate and prurience
between 6 and 10
when full bellies meet certitude in blonde and
blue eyed high-definition.
Is it jaded to see all of this and
not feel outrage?
not withdraw to memory prisons and Santana in shuffle mode?
not look on your woman rummaging in the kitchen
and know thanksgiving?
In the still of this masquerade,
when the jesters and their sexual minions
miss their rhythm and pages of the script are lost,
I pause, content in knowing that time is implacable
and measure by measure, my leeward years will slip
into sunrise collections
of memories by the sea.
-Bob Canuel
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Bob Canuel is the winner of the NinaAlvarez.net Poem of the Month Contest, April 2018.
Bob Canuel is retired now but has been writing poetry since he was a teenager, a long time ago indeed. Over that time, he has accumulated a large collection of poems inspired by life, the universe and everything, to borrow a phrase from A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Married for over thirty years, and formerly residents of Ontario, he and his wife moved to Calgary, Alberta, in 2016, where they are both active in the writing and craft communities.
Bob has had work published by Wax Poetry and Art, The Prairie Journal, Dying with Dignity Canada and will soon see a short poem published at Right Hand Pointing. He also had two works published in the 1990s in small anthologies now out of print.
——
Many thanks to all those who submitted your beautiful and transcendent work.
Submissions to the Poem of the Month Contest are always open.
And check out our two new recently opened contests:
Cosmographia Prize for Spiritual Fiction
Cosmographia Prize for Spiritual Nonfiction
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