Poetry

 

 

Charles Pierre

Amagansett

Slaughter is the work of the onshore surf.
No god but the crush of water on sand
reigns in this grinding hell, where shells
crack and shatter, plants shred to bits,
and scales, skin, and flesh tear from fish,
where continuous pounding and hiss
are a dirge for those living their last
wrenched moments here, where the dead
billions are waked in sifting shallows,
before they're cast on the beach to rot
or swept to sea, unburied in the depths.

 

Circle of Time

On my makeshift desk is a gold pocket watch,
with white face and black numerals, a gift
to Father at the start of his New York career.
In a photo I can see him seated with colleagues
in the roof garden of a Wall Street tower,
the watch held with thin fingers above his vest,
a braided chain, fastened to the stem, stretching
across his chest. I stare at the dark arrow hands
as they turn around the face to mark exact time—
and remember that this is the summer of 2010,
and the watch and photo are from 1910.

I am now more than three times the age of Father
in that photo, where his fresh face and new watch
give no hint of the pain we would bear at our jobs:
he, an accountant, broken by office intrigues
after decades of service; I, a writer, hunched
over crushing deadline copy for forty years.
The hands of his watch advance, and in the photo
he turns from the other men toward my apartment
two miles north, his youthful glance flying to me,
as my older one flies to him, in the circle of time
that joins father and son across a century of work.

 

 

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