The salinity of Salt Lake is such that even at 20 below the water doesn't freeze but becomes dense. Its possible to sail in winter and ski the same day. Sunrise is an event unmarred by smog and noise and powerfully potentiated by the starkness of dese


Great Salt Lake Sunrise

Twenty below
Air crisp as the snap of a dry twig
Water the consistency of syrup
Starlight sits at anchor

Two miles from shore
Elementally calm
Not a ripple or a puff

Wrapped in a buffalo robe
head resting against the cabin top
Stars Queen Ann's Lace dense pushed aside by
The Wedgwood light of a precursor sun

Yellow white spills
Over eastern saddle backs and sawtooths
blinding light coronas the edges
Coal aflame

Western Wasatch
alight with flamingo snow caps
The city in diamonds to the south

In preternatural response

I weep











Poetry by josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
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Written on 2011-12-03 at 01:15

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This would have been a very different poem without the first line. Those two words makes the scene other-worldly. I don't associate sailing with frigidity. It is a very intense poem. Crisp, as you say, and vivid. The end, the saline tears, brings it full circle. Though I was surprised at "I weep." It was leading up to, I thought, "I smiled."
2011-12-04


countryfog
A place I've not been, but now would like to. Your powers of description are always intensely evocative . . . I'll not soon forget stars dense as Queen Ann's lace.
2011-12-03