• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

  • Home
  • Poet Laureate Prompts
    • Prompts for Spring 2021
    • Prompts for Winter 2020
    • Prompts for Fall 2020
    • Prompts for Spring 2020
    • Prompts for Winter 2019
    • Prompts for Fall 2019
    • Prompts for Spring 2019
    • Prompts for Winter 2018
    • Prompts for Fall 2018
    • Prompts for Spring 2018
    • Prompts for Winter 2017
    • Prompts for Summer 2017
  • Journal
    • Willawaw Journal Winter 2020 Issue 11
    • Willawaw Journal Fall 2020 Issue 10
    • Willawaw Journal Spring 2020 Issue 9
    • Willawaw Journal Winter 2019 Issue 8
    • Willawaw Journal Fall 2019 Issue 7
    • Willawaw Journal Spring 2019 Issue 6
    • Events
    • Willawaw Journal Winter 2018 Issue 5
    • Willawaw Journal Fall 2018 Issue 4
    • Willawaw Journal Spring 2018 Issue 3
    • Willawaw Journal Winter 2017 Issue 2
    • Willawaw Journal Summer 2017 Issue 1
  • Submissions
  • About
    • The Editor
    • Behind-the-Scenes Creatives and Advisors
  • Contact

Bart Rawlinson

Walking Along the Beach

What’s wrong about self-pity, anyway?
                               — Elizabeth Bishop

My thin jacket is no match
for San Francisco. The cold
barks its way up my back.
It’s sunset without a sun —

just a low-hanging gray going
lower. The orange shoulders
of Golden Gate Bridge shrug
in the fog. The breathing Pacific

wears me out, lifting and falling
like a belly… you call late,
always too late, with that drop
in your voice when you say hey.

A single syllable stuffed
with sorries. Splayed on the sand
a rubbery seaweed, recently
abandoned, covers its face

with a shell. That I understand.
Doesn’t everyone? People
come and go though it seems
they’re mostly going.

Who hasn’t become an expert
at the art of farewell? My glasses,
an old prescription, are cloudy
with salt. A strong wind holds seagulls

as they surf the air. I’m envious.
How has my day been? The waves break
their dishes and throw the shards
in my direction. That kind of day.

 

Summer Evening, Age 12

The front porch turns orange at sunset, its color broken
by the curved shadows cast by the cane-backed chairs.

The boy leans forward in his father’s rocker to halt the sweat
running down his back. Inside the house his family lives

side by side in ordered rows like the scooped out places
in ice cube trays. It’s nearly 9 p.m. and still the temperature

is in the nineties. Humidity crawls its heavy body across
the darkened yard. Like velvet drapes, night finally falls.

Cicadas sew their whirring in the lining of the trees.
The fireflies are thousands of children wandering the air —

they hold aloft their flashing questions:  why? why?
The warmed grass calls — the boy goes and lies on its steaming

greenness, resting his head on his interlaced fingers.
He watches the sky stretch and lift its shirt to cool itself.

And there, the puncture of the crescent moon. He hears it
whisper:  climb up to me. Leave it all behind. Climb all night.

 
Bart Rawlinson received the 2013 William Matthews Poetry Prize. He has also received the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and the Robert Browning Prize in Dramatic Monologue. His work appears in Asheville Poetry Review, One, The Rumpus, Santa Clara Review, Assaracus and other magazines. He lives in rural California.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Print

Related

Footer

Stay In Touch

Subscribe to our mailing list for news about events, opportunities, and of course, the latest issue of Willawaw Journal.
* indicates required
We respect your privacy and will never sell or rent your personal information to third parties.

Support

Willawaw Journal requires no reading fees for submissions. Please make a donation to support the running of Willawaw Journal. Thank you!

Support Willawaw Journal

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Copyright © 2021 Willawaw Journal, LLC · WordPress · site design by Yeda, LLC