New Poetry - Summer's Out of Reach - Surfing the Last Wave

The Labor Day holiday's been and gone... here in the UK the weather has turned to autumn... so let's head into the weekend with a couple of poems hearkening back to the summer. Our two contributors are Mack W. Mani and Michael Lee Johnson...


Far Out on the Surf
by Mack W. Mani

Far out on the surf,
I saw them just before 
the grey dawn broke,
bright lights of turquoise 
and lavender hovering 
out above the waves. 

The way they glinted,
was almost like the eyes
of some deep creature,
come to surface once
every thousand years,
to see and be seen,
before submerging again. 

Not yet dressed,
I stepped onto the sand
and into autumn's salt-sea air;
I was alone on the beach
and I knew as soon as I saw them,
that you would never believe me. 

That even if you were there,
you would not have seen
those colors as I did,
casting strange shadow-shapes
upon the cliffside, sedge and sand,
strange, inhuman silhouettes,
vaguely pulsing with 
the rhythm of the tide. 

* Mack W. Mani is a Forward Prize and Rhysling nominated poet, playwright, and author. His work has appeared in various literary magazines including The Pedestal Magazine, NewMyths, and Neon.


California Summer
by Michael Lee Johnson

Coastal warm breeze
off Santa Monica, California
the sun turns salt
shaker upside down
and it rains white smog, humid mist.
No thunder, no lightening,
nothing else to do
except sashay
forward into liquid
and swim
into eternal days
like this.

* Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, business owner in Illinois. He has now been published in nearly 1000 small press magazines in 27 countries. His website is http://poetryman.mysite.com