Thursday, September 25, 2014

MOVING FURTHER UP THE COAST

by Laura Rodley



Image source: Professor Potts


Clear balloon like creature, submarine shaped
with small yellow orange and pink dots draped
along its body, tiny beads for eyes
and tendrils on its bottom, a surprise
swishing through the salt sea water, small as
my hand disappearing into morass
of bright green sea lettuce waving on rocks
but tide is leaving and this creature balks
from swimming with current into the sea
squishes against rocks covered with wavy
green troll hair, but he’ll dry up in the sun
and die if he doesn’t hurry up and run
into tidal sluice, so I herd him out,
guide him with my hand towards ocean, turned about,
this squid moving up the coast, weather’s burst,
hotter, never seen one before, my first.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.