Hi Paul:
Greetings from Manhattan. There is a common aid to navigation — often used in coastal waters — that has always had a special meaning for me as a poet. Here is “The Bell Buoy,” a poem from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.
Best wishes,
Charles Pierre
Shivering Sand. Photogravure by Wylie. Undated. Click to see the bell buoy more clearly. Reposted this poem from 2015 Blogfinger.net. ©
BELL BUOY
By Charles Pierre.
There is something singular in the rhythms
of the bell buoy, as it rings in the wake
of an unknown vessel already passing
on to its destination. The restless gestures
of this solitaire, anchored in the routine
of the sea, are a directing presence,
even in this hostile chopping,
metal on metal clanging from its heart,
clanging down the chain to the muddy anchor,
clanging out above the waves, creating
a point in the pointless sea, echoing out
to another, its clanging a song
of hope through these splintered waters,
a hard human song in an inhuman place,
something with a ringing truth to it
of who we are, something to sustain us,
wherever this imagined drifting leads.
Sounds: bell buoy ringing; waves hitting boat:
Music on the water, from the film The Sand Pebbles (1966) with Steve McQueen.:
MATT MONROE
Such a beautiful poem, even more so when read out loud. Just rolls along, like the waves.
Charles has a way of putting sentence’s together.
Having worked in a Borscht Belt hotel, a bell boy was someone who would take your bags to your room.
But Charles’ poem elicits memories of bells clanging on buoys or on boats in a harbor, in a marina, or out to sea. I have a bell like that on my house in Ocean Grove. I like to ring it and imagine that there will be an answer from out in the ocean; but that answer never comes.
And if you can couple that sound with the smell of the ocean, you experience an unmistakable memory of salt water, sea gulls barking, boats, and dreams of the sea.
For some reason, the smell of the ocean is experienced only occasionally in OG. So, like in Madam Butterfly, you might have to wait awhile for the sea to deliver. —-Paul