Monsoon

Dear 100th rejection slip, I am learning to spell
monsoon. I look forward to your square blue ocean:
starfish and whales of polite sentences wriggling
on harpoons, black tide awash with monsoon,
my lamp a fiery moon rising on krilly semi-colons,
maybe a sleek marine scribble. Soon, soon.
I seethe in the Arabian Sea, approach Panaji
from the southwest. How kindergarten, how 1978,
how monsoon. I am in love with your maps
and hieroglyphs – how jejune. When you cry
à la loon from my blustery mailbox I’m going
to order a fat drink speckled with plankton,
festooned with a paper umbrella bending in
monsoon, tiny tsunamis crashing the salted rim.
I might even kiss the postal clerk, Irishman
that I am, monsoon I long to be. I’m a candle-boat
on the anniversary of something terrible
and beautiful, some atom balloon, adrift on
a waveless lagoon, wailing monsoon monsoon.

Copyright © 2004 Mike Dockins All rights reserved
from 5AM
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission