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© Dee Rimbaud
   
  Public Radio, 12:37 a.m on a Saturday. 
By Amber Norwood      

  "And here's a little Nietzsche for all you lonely surfers out there. . . "

From this rock outcropping
due south to the sound, the crests
glow bright teal, the oxygenated
gasp of things you can't see          

glowing in the black, commits
to the inhale, exhale
brought about by the moon,
which is also not alive.        

But what you see moves,
propelled by magnets that draw
you to the breaking place          


where sand crabs tunnel
beneath chaotic grunion-shine,
slick, copulating before
God (dead) and everybody,          

to bear suffocation.
What you see, north,
is where the body of sand
curves pale and girlish; to the white noise she seems
to respire. She sees you,
the cave, purple lupine, as you see            

this old familiar as something new
because you move your own body
from your own line of sight, re-vision, knowing now,
in its stoic endlessness
curving toward the horizon –      

"if you gaze for long into an abyss,
the abyss also gazes into you."        

It is terrible. And new. Consuming.
And to remove yourself
from the darkness, paddle deep within it.

 

 

 

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com

 
      

Amber Norwood recently received her M.A. in Poetry from Cal State Northridge and now teaches writing at a few colleges in and around Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and cat. When she is not teaching writing, or commuting between colleges, she is making music and writing poems. Her work has previously appeared in The Northridge Review, Luhith, and The Bandersnatch.