Return to Harborside
tidal markings
underline a span of
palm, index finger crooked,
an arch bridge over a typewritten sea,
a projection, papering the reach
between us
is a course of time
mapped long ago, before
we sunk our nibs in inky depths
below the trusses of the Penobscot
we’ll spill out port side this summer
tracing the edge of Cape Rosier and
feeling all the sharpness of the year
feed into basins of glass and shell,
an exsanguination
of saline and of doubt
from here we run this northern route
with sails as wheels and words
we seek to sanctify
a promise born
of bivalve scars and wanderlust
our bloodlines drawn
out, held between cupped hands,
dipped in the waves and touching—
Lobster Tale
In Stonington
you capture me
and our elfin boy
sticky with
ice cream dripping
with soft-shell
longing to be
a rare snapshot
resembling love
Boy grows
shedding years
and stories and the old
life goes
and you see us
through the rainy
wharf-side film
In Stonington
are sprinkles and easels
and orphans and the old
ice cream stand
shuttered and still I
know your light is
and my light is
and the light is
painted when it cracks
open at the risk of being
Leaving Lewiston, 2
my eyelids sprayed with fireworks
a celebration I don’t want
to witness a phosphorescence
under the oily surface of loss
I wanted this to be different
I wanted
green sparks of new
growth and a dozen stems of promise
instead I tripped the darkness
still
when the velvet night spreads open
over a spine of backlit books
unread
I swear I can almost see my way to
where I was going before
the chrysanthemums bloomed and burst and I left them on my front doorstep
a sign of (a) life that was
and was not
Courtney Seymour received her B.S. in Biology from Union College and an M.L.S. (Library Science) and M.A. in English from the State University of New York at Albany. She is a librarian, instructor of research and persuasion at Southern New Hampshire University, mother of three neurodivergent boys, and a New England transplant. Her poetry is forthcoming in a chapbook from the Writer Shed Press and in The Elevation Review.
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