At moon high tide
I run off the end of the silvered dock
Phosphorous confounds inverted eyes
wanting to grasp something more
than air can offer
to sustain this body sinking
into black mollusk mud
and transparent jelly fish.
Jessan Dunn Otis (c) 1985
From the unpublished manuscript MIGRATIONS OF THE HEART
I’ve been washed in the water
Baptised into another life
You restore my soul
You rejuvenate my spirit
You lead me to still places, even
in the presence of turmoil and
terror
As safe harbor in a storm
Let me drop anchor and hold strong
against torment-tossed winds
I’ve been washed in the water
true home
Welcome me back when all this is done.
______________________________________
Jessan Dunn Otis (c) 2022
Summer Haiku
Swimming Under Water – poem
Walking away from home the macadam is still warm
black and sticky and the air air is
feeling the line of day and night as another mystery
To the end of the concrete walk
across cooled grass and over the warm stone to
the smell is sweet rotting fish and seaweed that is home, too
I leave my clothes on and swim south to the sea-thing
away from shore under water hearing my air rise
to be the ocean holding me all over in phosphorous, as eyeballs
ache, blurring the stones and the crabs scutter away.
(c)1983, 1989, 2015 – Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis – 1989 American Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Chicago, Chuck Kramer, Ed. & Publisher, p. 88.
Jessan Dunn Otis|Writer 