On an island of bird calls and ever crashing surf, collected shatterments of whelk, starfish, conch, a shipwreck built upon the back of centuries of coral, green by accident of wind and promiscuous gull, I woke and walked.                              My bare foot kicked up a curve of marble skull cup, smooth as any goddess' flesh under Praxiteles' hand, its soft parts worn away, its outer shell still gnarled and mottled like the sea.                              How did it happen to this one? What day, what season, what sudden tide making toward this island flipped it backward against the sharp rocks of the headland, or forced it tight between two stones--its short limbs pawing wildly in the merciless air? Or had its ancient slow metabolism ebbed, and the aged turtle crawled across the sand to where its mate last housed their egg, a delicate shell enclosing the next century's life, and there, as we will, not without pain, turned to give its thanks for life's fine high play which turtled over us and leaves love's strange, rich-vaulted shell to wash up on the shore and there be found by some early rising beachcomber, alone, in a misty foreign dawn, long after we have turned to water? Reprinted with permission from National Poetry Competition (1997 Winner) Copyright © 1997 by Gene Fendt Chester H. Jones Foundation

PLACES, THINGS, TIMES by Gene Fendt

If there were places in the heart, would they be places? A miniature of that attic room where we made love lodged on the bend of the vena cava? A bay window in the septum, inter-atrial, empty? Or do we mean, by places, things? Our two coffee cups, and the small Italian pot, and morning. Where does that quiet hour fit amid the rushing blood, opening and closing valves like doors in a busy household, and the constant double thump of life — a car hitting the expansion spaces on the concrete freeway? And if there are places in the heart, or things, or times, how does one close them up, pack them, put them up for sale? What am I bid for an attic room above the freeway? A breakfast table, espresso pot, two cups? Reprinted with permission from Whole Notes Copyright © 1996 by Gene Fendt

Bibliography Commentary Buy a Book Gene Fendt's Page Writers On-Line

Return to The Rock

Nebraska Center for Writers