Climate and Tide

Sonnets Break on Six Shores

Surefoot I navigate through landscapes I know so well I don’t need to dream them to rehydrate my days.

Glasgow Currents

Unseen from the high ground
of the Necropolis where city founders gather
the river separates living
streets from their neighbors

Neglect is redressed in sandstone blocks
in urbane spectacle and soundtrack
ventures from shipyard or commerce
launch on tides that drain away
floods or float the market

For fifty years I crossed this bridge
consistent in scotch mist on the road
to highlands and islands

On an aging undercurrent
I arrive at last as if returning

Thames Bridges

Eyes snag on skyline
jag on steel / round on weathered domes

water that sang fresh in meadows now glints
its way in shades of mud
through urban scapes to reclaim salt marsh
and evaporate

Pace matched with parallel trucks and trains
I step above the wake of river traffic
on a bridge built for a smart millennium
monitor my footsteps with an app

I would trace my London source
across years and bridges
if I could walk that far

Chicago Riff

Unpublished words ripple across rhythms
picked out by hand / nestle against electric chords
blow a riff through the crowd
snatch rays / bounce over molded steel
where drab sportswear reflects as fine art
in an urban hall of mirrors

The lake makes itself known / whispers its own songs

Michigan Shoreline

I walk this barefoot shore another time
pick up pebbles and driftwood
for art and for a gravestone and to save on my desert table

All the loves I ever found here walk with me
at their pace or swim the waves or watch from a porch
as sun moves to evening / the fresh lake so huge
its horizon curves all across my world

Outer Banks NC:

The gulf stirs brine against the horizon
it laps shallow against reed homes
of vociferous amphibians and taciturn snakes.
City skins pucker and surf above rip tides.

Meters away across a land bridge
breakers strand shelled creatures
while out of mind beyond the foam
islands form of human debris
and storm rings build an implacable rhythm.
Clapboard homes summered in beach colors pause
between narrow coasts while sand erodes
and sea prepares to claim roofs for driftwood.

We owned this land carelessly without a covenant.
We’ll be extinct far longer.

Glencoe Roots:

I think there may be gold roots in this hill
where a rainbow set down its foot and glowed
a mirage that gilded charmed lochs and showed
our hospitable village as dour and chill.
I think a footprint of our journey’s still
embedded in heather not far from the road
where plantations of pines cast a late shadow
on this extinct volcano that once distilled
ash to mud and magma to stone. I heard
the caw of a vagabond crow that blinded
a lamb under marauding mist
there on the high grazing while we cleared
the burn* that piped our water and I minded
mood swings of climate and tide that persist.

*Burn: Scots for stream, brook

Mori Glaser spent her earliest years in Singapore, grew up in the UK, and moved to Israel 35 years ago. Her varied career included blogging and writing for non-profits.

Now in her 70th year, her poetry and flash have appeared over the past decade in a variety of journals including Eunoia Review; Eclectica; Sky Island Journal; Unbroken; Between the Lines’ anthology, Fairy Tales and Folklore Re-imagined; Arc (journal of the Israel Association of Writers in English); The Molotov Cocktail.