The Stone Menagerie

(for Polly Bradley of Nahant)

What is inordinate
are the hippopotami of rocks
at Nahant,
thick-skulled,
unblinking, refusing
to mourn themselves;
a half-displaced
surge out of sand as if
they've lost their breath
in that terrible
underworld of salt
and constant push.
Their shoulders
beam as smooth as agates
from the iodized wash,
gray pavilions
of armor plate massive
in titillating breezes.
Some are remote,
the unknown at reunions
holding quiet places,
waiting for recognition
in a place in the pool,
a niche in the sun.
Only the sun
enters these huge hearts
and moves them,
only the sun
stirs the core where
memory has upheaval.
But in moonlight,
as the cold year ends down
and sand leaps to lace
as intricate
as six-point stitching,
the broad backsides
become mirrors
and a handful of earthquake
glows at rest.

Father

His face
is made of music,
notes of an order
I have yet to know.

The mystics
of his hands,
engraved with the timeless,
bear strange annointments.

The salt
of his touch, once known,
leaps up past
all of pain.

After God
and my father
there are no divinities.

^

Biography

Nine years retired, Tom Sheehan operates with his partner, Larry Bucaria, Newwriters.com, an Internet service to help writers find landing space in the publishing world. About 500 of his poems have appeared in magazines; he's published 3 books of poetry; and is co-editor with John Burns of the soon-to-be issued 600 page book "A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000," a nostalgic and historical view of his hometown, Saugus, MA, just north of Boston.