As I roll the the ball joint of my hip
I press my lower back into mattress
as my hand explores the center line
of the arch of my right foot where a

Sharp rock cut it in that tidal flat that
floods with the rising incoming tide
that cuts off Cuthbert’s Island from
Holy Island where Cuthbert’s monks

Lived in the 7th century Northumbria
just across from Bamburgh where still
a Middle-Age castle with 20th century
repair sits on the “Heugh” plate uplift

Of Earth that Hadrian’s Wall followed
all the way across from the North Sea
to the Irish Sea huge molten core shrug
furrows the land on which I waited too

Long even though somehow I knew it
was the full moon tide that rushed in
with a strong wind behind it pushing
from the N. Sea carrying in its strong

Gusts the sounds of 2 colonies of seals
honking back my own harmonic chords
of separated tone with which I called to
them and could see them bobbing heads

Coming to me realizing the incoming
tide would already overtop my shoes so
I kicked them off to wade to Holy Island
wet to my thighs and hole in bloody foot.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.