Three
Poems
by
Victoria
White
Recovering
There’s a hole in this boat and I don’t know where.
It will sink but it will be slow. That I know.
First oily water down below then a stain that spreads
across the cabin floor is how it goes. I will slosh about
and lift boxes onto the bunk. Write help on a table cloth
and tie it to the mast. Sit with my legs up in the captain’s
chair. The water will rise dark -- roll the boat to starboard
then to port. A wine bottle will float past. I’ll grab it
swim to the galley for a floating glass. When we’re sunkI’ll be drunk and glad to have an unassailable excuse at last.
Interspecies Encounter
I dreamt within my arms I held a horse
a muscled mare a racer
she lay her long brown neck across my breast
and I could feel against my cheek the shudder
of a silken ear
Long horse legs stuck out over the bed
I was a little fearful
of the hooves
but because we were aware
that perhaps some law was being broken
both of us
were very still
Important Thoughts on Certain Birds
thinking about the Bower Birds and structure and art and such
but not for long for I realize that I’m just thinking about
thinking about it and that a terrible metamorphosis will come
when the difference is obscured so instead I dwell upon the
reeds woven with flowers that line the path paved with small
white stones and bones that lead the Bower Bird hen to
view the arch creation festooned with purple berries designed
twig by twig for her and her alone -- then think again about
art and such and how all that is required is an audience of one
About Victoria White
Though her artist family hoped she would become a painter, White rebelled and became an award-wining playwright. Her earliest love however, was poetry and for the last fifteen years it has become her main focus. Currently she is finishing a chap book of love poems, A Generic Affair.
PODCASTING POETS OF SANTA BARBARA
