Gregory Lobas is the author of Left of Center (Broadkill River Press, 2022), which won the 2022 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Other awards have come from the Delaware State Press Association, Poetry Society of South Carolina, and the South Carolina Writers’ Association. His work has appeared in many journals including Tar River Poetry, Cimarron Review, Vox Populi, Ekphrastic Review, Broad River Review. Originally from the Great Lakes region of Ohio, he lives and writes in the foothills of western North Carolina.
Cobbled streets and fountain squares
behind us now. Rose and terra cotta
hills like the dust of a chalk sketch.
The sea sparkles like glazed
tiles of the city walls,
aqua, ink, and crystal.
My eyes, like those of a newborn,
cannot distinguish beauty from beauty,
and I fill up with the bronze
of her until she meets my gaze.
Where shall we go? I ask,
coiling a mooring line.
Barcelona.
She does not hesitate.
Why not Barcelona?
Billows chase cat-and-mouse
before the wind. Henry the Navigator’s
monument dips below the purple
swells, no more than a doll bobbing
as we exit the harbor. The city dwindles,
so many sand castles shrinking
on the shore, the urban murmur
subsumed by the slap-and-tickle
of waves on the hull, pop
and pull of canvas, straining
ropes, tinkling bells of her laughter.
With this sail we own the world,
her hair streaming like a princess.
I have to kiss her cheek. No,
it is the world which owns us,
I’m afraid. She faces me,
a sudden change in the weather.
Nevertheless, she perches
the word on her shoulder
to regard me like a bird in the sun.
Nevertheless, Barcelona.
The Gift of Forgetfulness
Swathed in lavender chiffon,
the Neapolitan moon
hovers over rose petal waters
like a mythic heart pouring its love
upon the gentle swell of coastal
hills where village lights
open to it in a spray of amber florets.
Water swallows all sound
but its own rippling, while vapors
lift from the surface like a dream.
Shall we forget, just for the night,
dreamer, lost so in love, the centuries
of tears it took to fill up our Sea?
Poetry in this post: © Gregory Lobas
Published with the permission of Gregory Lobas