Preferably the dreams
Arriving from the blue sea
To the pentameters of oars
What it means
To have instead of coins
These spirited verses
Ashore the ghosts set fire
To their own ships
To bar the way back
Here they trace the portents
On the incoming tide
And make their final stand
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naïve haircuts 
Sounds inspired by the Invasions. Nice job, Bob.
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Thanks! I read the Iliad last year…that may be part of it.
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Ah, very good. I can picture the ghosts of our dreams, trying to block the dreaded reality from arriving . . .
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Thanks, Diana. When you got a good dream going, you just want it to last a little longer.
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I love ‘the pentameters of oars’ and I’m a fan of ‘spirited verses’ too —
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Thanks, John! Glad those resonated with you. 😊
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one time i was in a lake in a canoe, not too far from Milwaukee. anyway, i struggled mightily with the oars until my dad told me to not go so deep, to just skim the surface and after that adjustment, the canoe stopped turning and we got a little speed and it was “spirited” with no risk of falling like there is in skiing…”ships” and “incoming tide”……this whole piece, rooted in water, in the arrival of water, the incoming tide. I’m reminded of the few times i’ve been beside an ocean which kind of feels like a dream now. My grandpa retired in florida and used to swim in the atlantic every non rainy morning.
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I’ve been wanting to visit the ocean lately. It’s been years since I’ve stood/swam in it. It would be great to swim in it every day. Though I guess you’d have to live in warmer climates. Though at this point, I’m just ready to have spring food in.
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it is huge, the ocean. i wish i didn’t know about sharks. then i’d be less scared of swimming in oceans, but i bet the next time i’m there i won’t think about sharks. it’s like being on a plane and not thinking about all the controlled explosions going on while a stewardess smiles and offers us a nice cup of coco.
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“To the pentameters of oars”: nice. Yet the poem has approximate trimeter lines–in tercets. So there’s an almost traditional orderliness about it, though the absence of punctuation enables me to float through it like a ghost. I like free verse that’s haunted by the ghost of a traditional prosody. This one is two lines short of a sonnet too.
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Dreams and ghosts and portents and the burning of ships to prevent return. But in the middle: those “spirited verses” instead of coins. To me they are the hope, sweeping ashore on the incoming tide.
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