The Minky Cantos

THE MINKY CANTOS

By JC STREET © 2004 all rights reserved

They begin in March 2002, in a cottage overlooking
the Irish Sea @ Crawfordsburn, Northern Ireland –
10 miles east of Belfast. The poet contemplates the imminent arrival of his cyberlove whom he has not seen for two years – they follow the arrival and the contemplation and later reflect the destruction of that love and its almost catatonic aftermath.

SOOBEE in e minor

This is where love starts this
white pebble-bird but how

how did you make it fly—your
fine, high cheekbone as though
scalpel-flensed
stuns plangently -- those

wise eyes, gold-framed
elucidate the wedge you cleaved
in this lough sky--lick-lapped
Carlingford, this

circling pebble-bird now crying
littoral-skipping

eye-gouging a path to your lost
footprint

that ‘ere memoire of lough-light
heart-skipping, I

feel its feather-brush

SOOBEE in f sharp

Pure and fragile then
warm

as a hay sheave cleaves in the wind
she becomes ‘twixt-faceted -- airlight

sprinkle-speckled this
sunbirdsoobee motley spring -- skinsing
warm with song and birdbeak

singsoar

airlight the child
straining in her heart to be
heard to be
soobee

SOOBEE in A minor march 31 2002

Here she comes again
parting the warm air
her cloak tonight, the stars
twinkling in her hair, but

it is the eyes

the eyes that sheen so lambently
on our nightly visit, it is

the eyes,

which mirror her so clearly yet
they are so deep that
sometimes
their shadows draw me tighter in
bind me tighter in

to her

SOOBEE in prospect april 2 2002

It was as though the dark had
pelted me
with battering rain

her figure in the doorway

here
at last
she stood

the arrangements were impeccable,
nothing
had gone wrong

SOOBEE in retrospect

Sometimes I see her
at night on the lake a
luminescence comes, I

leave my cave,the fire damped down
leaving a small warmth, I

wander the shore and peer out,
searching, thinking
is it my prayer made flesh?

I

wander the shore and I see it
the luminescence, I
cannot feel the wavelets lapping at my feet my hand
is outstretched

soobee in g-sharp april 10 2002

and now the beach is empty
of all but the cruel wind, the
small dog in the distance
barking and worrying

the razor clams, the detritus,
no human
walks here now, no love
warms it -- the sea

so far out now it
has disappeared, the
saltspray no longer
in our nostrils

-30-

lough is Irish equivalent of Scottish “loch”

Carlingford Lough is a major Irish sea inlet between the Republic of Ireland to the South and Northern Ireland (Ulster) to the North--

soobee is a Net nic