after – David Fitch

after - David Fitch

washed up on the shore to dry,
only a tiny salty pocket left.
listening close, a shell of a bell
that sounds like moving, shifting tide
but is only the audience’s audible wish,
and whimsy’s little, and bone of fish
murmured in place of truly said.

marvel, spiral pattern once secreted,
trembling tendril, creature’s feet
that walks away, that is being eaten,
leaves
this polished artist’s aftermath,
unbroken conch,
textbook picture,
fundamental blank
with a perfect edge,
the missing life to nothing wrong.

When David Fitch was sixteen, his English teacher said, you can either write an essay or a poem – three pages about no-idea-what or eight lines of something-doesn’t-have-to-make-sense. Simple!

Fifty years and 170,000 lines later, he’s GIVING them away. Meanwhile, he swallowed his Literary Angst enough to write two dozen short, humorous memoirs published on The Good Men Project.

David is retired from civil service now, in time to take care of four dogs, thirty birds and his husband, with plenty of extraneous paper to line the cages. He also enjoys hanging out with other poets – since March via email – in the Southeast Michigan Poetry Meetup.