Carl Boon
Sea Life
In the last photograph,
my father dozes
on a beach house deck
in Avon, North Carolina.
All around him was alive,
the sea oats, the fishermen
trudging up the dunes,
his grandchildren’s faces.
It would be the final time
he slept near the sea,
the final waking
to that sudden, familiar wind.
In the kitchen, blue crabs
boiled, Old Bay Seasoning
had tipped on the counter.
A pair of fishing rods
leaned against the print
of the Bodie Island Light.
We moved to and fro
with bottles of Red Stripe,
singing, lingering, happy.
The sea was ours,
the whipped sand
a companion against death.
A native Ohioan, Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Two Thirds North, Jet Fuel Review, Blast Furnace, and the Kentucky Review.
Sea Life
In the last photograph,
my father dozes
on a beach house deck
in Avon, North Carolina.
All around him was alive,
the sea oats, the fishermen
trudging up the dunes,
his grandchildren’s faces.
It would be the final time
he slept near the sea,
the final waking
to that sudden, familiar wind.
In the kitchen, blue crabs
boiled, Old Bay Seasoning
had tipped on the counter.
A pair of fishing rods
leaned against the print
of the Bodie Island Light.
We moved to and fro
with bottles of Red Stripe,
singing, lingering, happy.
The sea was ours,
the whipped sand
a companion against death.
A native Ohioan, Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Two Thirds North, Jet Fuel Review, Blast Furnace, and the Kentucky Review.