Safe Harbor

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts (1969-2008)

The sea at night seems

an alembic of dreams—

the moans of the gulls,

the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late

to be melancholy,

I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams

to safe harbor again.

In the twilight she gleams

with a festive light,

done with her trawlings,

ready to sleep . . .

Deep, deep, in delight

glide the creatures of night,

elusive and bright

as the poet’s dreams.

Michael R. Burch is the editor of The HyperTexts, on-line at www.thehypertexts.com, where he has published hundreds of poets over the past three decades. His poetry has been translated into fourteen languages, taught in high schools and colleges around the globe, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers. A five-time Pushcart nominee, his poems, translations and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary journals, including The Lyric, New Lyre, Romantics Quarterly, The Chained Muse, LIGHT, Measure, Southwest Review, The Chariton Review, The Chimaera, Brief Poems, Poem Today, Asses of Parnassus, Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing and The Best of the Eclectic Muse.