Eco-Poetry.org

3 Eco-poems by

George Guida : Salmon ; The Eight-Foot Oak ; Hulks

George Guida is the author of four books, including The Pope Stories and Other Tales of Troubled Times (Bordighera Press: NY, 2012.) His volumes of poetry include New York and Other Lovers (Smalls Books, 2008) and Low Italian (Bordighera Press: NY, 2006). He teaches English and creative writing at New York City College of Technology, and serves as Poetry Editor of 2 Bridges Review. He is also president of The Italian American Studies Association and has published in various literary magazines and anthologies, as well as given many readings and presented at numerous conferences, on various campuses throughout the coutry and Met Area.

SALMON

We cherish the vision
of salmon leaping like acrobats
across netted orange netted pens
stark in the dark harbor.

Balanced on the continent's tip,
watching salmon leap their hearts,
we believe in the goal,
the reproduction of self
at the end of a great journey
in search of dark water bliss
in the wilds of Maine.

We are leaping from place to place,
believing that every leap
leads to the soul’s escape,
when we are destined for life
in a comfortable pen.

Beyond our cliff-side vision
lies the truth of salmon,
submarine dances of glance,
the mutual current we need
in all these instinctive jetés..

_______________________________

THE EIGHTY-FOOT OAK

If life were all nature you’d still be

in it as much as the boy who romps
on your stumpy grave, arms jammed
in the hollow that was your heart.

I paid a week’s wage to disappear
you, limb by limb shear you to the trunk,
by whines like distressed squirrels'
chirp notes longer than their weeks.

Not lost on you either, the irony
of a mild winter interrupted
fills me like the fenced-in space
I pass days deciding how to mark.

Yours sins were shade and allergens
and cleft leaves imperial as wind.
If only I could have imagined you
bare or never having lived at all.

___________________________________

HULKS

Silver coffins across train yards
have smothered dreams in hours
rattling through shingled suburbs
like old postcards in plastic,
keeping terrible secrets revealed
through newspapers and beer cans.

Residents have sacrificed
primal green force to these yards,
cards, and constant schedule.
These hulks, these mausoleums
almost recall to them
how extravagantly they spend.

___________________________________________