I don’t always know what poems mean, even my own. That is one irony of imagery: it speaks to us in ways we can’t articulate. In a sense, imagery allows language to transcend itself, to say what can’t be said.
My new book, The Anonymity of Waiting, has a number of poems like this, poems where I’m not exactly sure what I’m “saying” but that I find striking nonetheless. Below is one of these called “Planting the Ocean.”
Planting the Ocean
How could I plant the ocean?
How could I ever cover with earth
the writhing, wailing, tempestuous turbulence
covering the earth?
Could I make a seed of the seas,
would it sprout and grow
into a sky whose deep blue bloom
forms (finally) a horizon,
a line where the sun rises
in the dark,
making salt water weep glitter
into the heavens?
A Wandering Minstrel 