The Sunken Lightship

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Sound Buoy
It presides
Over our passing
In and out
Of the Bogue Narrows.
We rise
From sea gullies
And watch it sway
To a mindless
Humping of waves.
In soft seas
Its moans
Are more our own.
If I name it
Red Nun of the Narrows,
The pleasure won't last,
For it turns unruly at a whim
And will outlast our coming
And going.
Once, alone,
In wild weather,
I felt
The wallow and topple,
The fit of its color
In close thrashes,
My tongue
Salted and stunned
Into a silence
That burned.
BOA Editions, Ltd 1990

Author Bio

Founder of Tar River Poetry and editor for 30 years, Peter Makuck taught at East Carolina University from 1976 to 2006. His stories, poems, reviews and essays appear in Poetry, The Nation, Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, and The Georgia Review. He is author of four volumes of poetry, two short story collections, and co-edited a book of essays.