Tuesday poem #323 : Brenda Brooks : Ebb

The thrill is gone, she said.  

Life’s not one long jubilee anymore:

Left last night — won’t be back.

But to be fair she put it kinder

(she was always very polite)

and clarified the situation over many hand-

written pages of textured linen warm as rum,

or the dune-colored chapters from

an old book about shipwrecks.

To and fro rolled her indigo waves —

a lonely mariner’s log recording miles

& miles of overboard losses:

Eight pages.

Eight abandoned beaches

of late September.

As for flotsam:

a single strand of her hair.

Brenda Brooks has published two poetry collections and a novel, Gotta Find Me an Angel, a finalist for the Amazon.ca/Books In Canada First Novel Award. Her work has been included in anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Her new novel, HONEY, a passionate, dangerous, noirish tale about, well, two women, will be published by ECW Press in Fall of 2019.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan