Cedar Key after storm by William Logan

Poems

September 2004

Cedar Key after storm

Burke

was right!

for Donald Justice, 1925—2004

The fish shacks turned an oystery glow,
the drowned light more intense.
Along the blank sky low
clouds learned from experience.

A bridge leapt over the inlet
where sawtooth reeds had bedded,
like spears in rusting silhouette,
as the summer storm receded.

Carved from gray blocks of wood,
enormous sad pelicans
on the concrete balustrade stood
stiff as librarians,

as if they dimly knew
the mighty events to come.
The distant thunder grew
fainter, like a brushed kettle-drum.

And you were a great bird, sickly,
fleeing the northern weather.
Ten years had passed quickly
since we watched the Gulf together.

Look back, you said, at the theft
of boredom, and jazz, and the rages,
and see what little is left—
just a book of the thinnest pages.

< ...

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William Logan will have a volume of early selected poems out in the spring.

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