Michael Sofranko

Over the Edge of Our Wooden Boat,
You Look into Your Reflection
 
I wonder about all things
That live under the surface
 
Where the milfoil leans
Towards shafts of sunlight
 
And schools of small fish
Rise to be fed.
 
Under the influence
Of an enormous silence
 
Everything in the universe
Speaks to you.
 
The trees seem to whisper
When the wind blows.
 
At other times
The stillness is their song.
 


On Learning to Live Without You
for Linda

I received a message
I never returned
In time.
 
Then you never returned
At all.
 
I cannot erase
Your voice.
 
Years ago, when I stood behind you
On a cliff as you faced the Pacific
 
The wind howling onshore
Blew your words
Into my ears.
 
They rang like two shells
With the sound of the Sea
 
Inside them.
It never stopped.
 
When the wind whipped back
your hair
I moved closer
 
So that wisps of it
Would play against my face.
We were dreamers then.
 
Now I have a message
I never returned
In time.
 
And you, who will never
Return at all.
 
No guitar. No song at dusk.
No prayer inside
The small locked box I keep.
 
I am losing you slowly.
I am losing you
Over & over.
 
Under several layers
Of blankets,
I listen to the bayou,
 
Full of the wailing lament
Of everything living
 
In the false spring.
And I still hope to find you
 
In the unreadable murmur
Of insects, screeching of their needs
Through the canopy of trees.

Michael is a writer, editor, poet, and professor, who received his MFA from the Writers Workshop at University of Iowa. He also attended the PhD program in Creative Writing at the University of Houston. His work has appeared in many literary journals. He received the Sean Christopher Britton Award for his manuscript, Homing Instincts, and was awarded the Antonio Machado Prize for his collection, American Sign. His research into the wide-open casino culture in Hot Springs, Arkansas, during the early 1960s, laid the foundation for The Vapors, a series pilot for television, which he recently co-authored with award winning filmmaker, Michael McKinley. He has led Creative Writing Workshops in the United States and Europe, and for eighteen summers he taught at Cambridge University, England, as part of the Oxbridge Academic Program, where he served as Dean of Faculty. He currently lives in Houston, Texas.