Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems by Terese Svoboda
Body Mostly Flown
Countess Lethargy
Hope Wanted Alive
The Blank of America
Essays by Terese Svoboda
Postcard: Advice to a Young Poet
Related Poems
Old Photographs
by Gabeba Baderoon
The Children's Hour
by Li-Young Lee
Cape Coast Castle
by Yusef Komunyakaa
crossword
by Valzhyna Mort
Dead Straight
by Olive Senior
Six a.m. Halfway Tree, Kingston 10
by Adziko Simba
Summer Rice
by Linda Susan Jackson
Vespertina Cognitio
by Natasha Trethewey
You Can't Survive on Salt Water
by Kalamu ya Salaam
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Jamaican Idol

 
by Terese Svoboda

Walking backward from the sea,
scales shedding, you seek the cave. 

This is why the French door admits
only ocean. You stare into the louver

and forget how to get out. Lull
is the word, or loll. The sea returns,

completing your pulse, the waves live,
each breath of yours worship.









From So Much Things To Say: 100 Calabash Poets, edited by Colin Channer and Kwame Dawes. Copyright © 2010 by Terese Svoboda. Used with permission of Calabash International Literary Trust and the author.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.