2009 -- 1.2 (Spring) Poetry

Island Park in Fog by T. Allen Culpepper

Bright daylight sometimes makes 
paradise too real to love, 
glinting off traffic snarling 
through high-rise hell, 
flashing lime-green tourists 
dodging the defeated, drunken homeless 
to admire motor launches always docked 
and little terriers in fancy-dress. 
 
But tonight a fairy-mist of fog 
dances with surf along seawalls, 
encircling the gilded faux-Venetian domes, 
making faint the bridge’s curve, 
softening the cruel edges 
of a soaring condo block 
that, like the masts of sailing-ships, 
now reaches into Neverland: 
 
The barks of dogs revert to primal howls, 
the vestigial memory of oceanic chaos 
whirlpools into present time. 
With its mysteries re-forbidden, 
paradise, for an hour or two, 
returns.