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Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Poetry Fish

 —Poetry by Tim Suermondt, Cambridge, MA
—Illustrations Courtesy of Public Domain
 
 
ANOTHER WRITER

He’s smooth and beautiful,
An angel with words.
He always puts both feet forward,
Both of them being his best.

He chronicles the human heart
From past, to present and future,
Always seemingly at the right place
At the write time. Such ease

And wisdom pouring like honey
Over his myriad readers,
Who never fail to always follow
Wherever he takes them: a golden

Highrise, a blue mountain top,
A street too lonely to ever forget.
He’s smooth and beautiful,
You’d never doubt he had wings too.
 
 
 
 

THE DAY IS RELIGIOUS

And an angel on the street
calls for me to come down.

“Don’t you mean come up?”
“Just do it,” she says, the irritation
in her voice can’t be hidden.

I put on my shoes and arrive to find
her gone. I’ve had it with the mysteries
of religion and decide to get

a bite at the diner, sunlight emerging
over my shoulder like a halo.
 
 
 
 

ROBERT KENNEDY IN APPALACHIA

He pushes himself up the dirt road,
sweat soaking into his white dress shirt.

A man says “That’s the Kennedy. Not
that anything’s gonna change.” “Nope,”

a woman says, “everything’s gonna change.
We just need to give him a chance.”
 
 
 
 
 
BRUCE LEE

He did his Kung Fu fighting
long ago

when Hong Kong was more village
than metropolis,

small buildings harbored along
the shore,

junks crammed together in a life
of rice and fish,

lights pulsating at night like fireflies,
twitching ancestors,

“Be like water” and all the boys and girls
tried their best.

Even the colonial authorities applauded
Lee and his afro-

haired heroes who kept the island safe
and admired,

the mainlanders close enough to touch
but so far away.
 
 
 


PROPORTIONATE

A huge cruise ship
lumbers by our hotel window.
But my wife and I like boats
smaller and more human scale.
“Not for us,” we say in unison
and return to unpacking.
Later that afternoon from a tiny veranda
we watch sailboats come and go,
gliding better than marlins.
“That’s magnificent,” we say in unison
and stay until every boat ties up
for the night, secure in the sea’s hands.
 
 
 

 
POETRY FISH

The man is still fishing
with an hour to go until nightfall.

He must be a serious angler
judging by the plastic fish

festooned to his woolen hat.
“Hear the fish have been biting.”

“Nope,” he says, “haven’t had
a nibble since last Sunday.”

I tell him he sounds like a poet,
not knowing exactly why I did.

“Poetry fish,” he says, “don’t get
much of them around these parts.”

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

—Henry David Thoreau

____________________

Newcomer Tim Suermondt’s sixth full-length book of poems,
A Doughnut And The Great Beauty Of The World, came out in 2023 from MadHat Press. New York Quarterly Books will publish his latest collection, Spring Training In Paris, in 2024. He has published work in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, Smartish Pace, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong. Welcome to the Kitchen, Tim, and don’t be a stranger!

_____________________

—Medusa
 
 
 
 Tim Suermondt
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 







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