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D.R. James
Seaside at Seaside
The lilac beaches, the rough promenade,
have frozen over in the night. Before,
a crude clasp of dread (chambered, astringent
critic) contrived each dream, plucking each step
in the stingy halls of solace in which
I moved, my mind’s coughing way. It could’ve
done nothing other. And I was bitter—
till I saw waves still waltzing, their 3-4,
3-4, 3-4 rise-and-falls, Valse Brilliante,
reviving their 2-4 dance in my bones.
About the writer:
D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 35 years and lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. Poems and prose have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, his latest of eight poetry collections are If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press) and Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box), and a microchapbook All Her Jazz is free and downloadable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project.
Image: Ice Floes Under the Midnight Sun by William Bradford (1823-1892). No medium specified. No size specified. 1869. Public domain.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporationsupporting writers and artists worldwide.
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