Poem: Not in a Bottle

 

 

Not in a Bottle

 

lots of bustling blue suits. 

lots of frothy letters

which hop from lapel to label.

it’s an oceanic post office,

where no one grasps the comings-and-goings.

liquid sentences toss and frolic

higgledy-piggledy

unruly and uncontained.

 

there aren’t even bottles to hold the scrolls.

the rolling, roiling multitudes

wait and wait and wait

for a promise that might never have been written.

 

it’s hard not to ask myself,

 ‘is that some distant clue,

 that one, out there,

atop the thousandth wave or so?’

then i blink, and add,

‘now where did it ship off to?’

 

maybe all the shifty posts

sheering in the flotsam and bluster

are simply as blank as foam--

nothing but

little-orphan-annie eyes

of nameless accountants,

coy as they open to close

accounts that can never be 

deactivated.

 

i remember, a long time ago, 

a preoccupied letter from the ocean

pushed up bubbles between my toes.

it didn’t care about foolish things:

envelopes, postage, or an address.

 

but as rapidly as i read,

hungry grains of sand

gobbled up the letter's pretense.

the reveal unraveled

before i could articulate

what had not quite been seen.

 

and i remember, too,

a rogue wind came right after, 

and with a snicker rushed the last wisps of

‘Dear Whimsical Dreamer … ’

away.

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7/4/25 ... mods ... so many poems to fix, so little time

3/2/25 .... mods