Poems by Ken Holland
Archives: by Issue | by Author Name
What We Created When We Created the Brilliant Sky
by Ken Holland
From Canary Summer 2024
Ken lives in the mid-Hudson Valley within the Hudson River watershed, which covers over 13,000 square miles. As the river approaches NYC, a sheer cliff of rock rises along the west bank, the Palisades, remnants of when the land was uplifted via massive volcanic and earthquake activity at the end of the Permian Period 250 million years ago and believed to be one of the great extinction events of this planet. And here we go again...
1
Only I’ve learned to say sorry in so many tongues
Dispiacere, desole, siento,
And still it is not enough
Je suis desole
You the sorrow that broke to flame
Who swept the high hills on rainless wind
Blackened memory with the heat of your hand
In thrall to your own aberration.
2
The dark declining shelf of the sea kisses you away
The heat of your body flickers within the black weight of water\
The julep gloss of your lips in last fluorescence
You are the earth warming, with or without my pity
Your slow immersion
The last brilliant glimpse of a wavering sky.
© Ken Holland