Dover Beach by Michael Grinthal

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Let’s learn the physics

Of ducklings 

Their desperate love

The missing data

Only deepens it

This dandelion feeling

Of the eyes

Tears like

Little feet kick

There

Is the truck

On its side 

In the grass on the 

Side 

Of the expensively

Torn sea

At night 

The traffic lights

Think like ants

Inside the earth

Ah love

But you 

And I are locked 

Outside the ground

And the sky

Is trapped in here too

No no!

The waves cry

Many more times

See they toss

Up their dunce caps, come

To the window love

Listen! The ocean

Is ghosting us

I want to be

Naked and humanless

Too

Ah love

Be ignorant of me

Be alien, begin

And cease and then 

Again begin, the thin

Warm Christmas rain

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Michael Grinthal’s poems have appeared in Jubilat, Swifts & Slows, Yes Poetry, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Mary, and other publications.  He lives in Brooklyn, NY and has worked for 23 years as a community organizer and lawyer in the racial justice and tenants’ rights movements. He has worked for 10 years as a parent and 48 years as a child.

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7 August 2023