MARION de VOS
Battery Park City view
When I woke up
on Christmas Day,
New York City
finally fits.
From my window,
Ellis Island floats idly
among the silver ripples,
of the Hudson. Beyond,
container cranes
tower above the industrial sprawl
of the New Jersey bank,
like giraffes,
walking through an urban savannah,
as if to remind me
of my first love:
Africa.
Smoke stacks of factories,
like elephant trunks
trumpet plumes
in the air.
The old train station
of Jersey City, a beacon,
in Communipaw Cove,
among former oyster beds.
Ferries hurry across,
leave a tail of foam.
try to beat tug boats,
push barges like whales.
The coppery robe of
the Statue of Liberty
faces the sun,
shines like malachite.
Migrating flocks of Brant geese
hug the coast,
graze marsh grasses,
in the sheltered bay.
And then the tide,
that flees from you
but, in time
will return.
I’ m home again.
I never have to ask
what time it is,
Colgate’s clock tells me.
poetryrepairs #238 v17.06:071
MARION de VOS
Ways of seeing
Ice-flowers on my window:
an island country,
the Philippines perhaps.
Heaped snow on the sill:
a whale before the splash
of Hukusai’s wave.
Spilled mercury
from the broken thermometer:
silver-fish on the floor.
Hot syrup in cooling water:
pyroclastic lava flows
in the sea.
Water recedes
from the bottom of the tub:
continents split over time.
Sand rippled by winds
on the beach:
deserts without limits.
The shadow of a plant
on the wall:
a giant redwood pine.
Clotted curls of dog hair
blown forth on my terrace:
prairie tumbleweeds.
You ‘re never bored
as long as
you keep looking,
with the eye of Frank Stella,
who captured cigar smoke,
boxed it in, released it,
caught it on camera:
whirling garlands,
to celebrate the Art of Looking.
poetryrepairs #238 v17.06:071
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MARION de VOS-Hoekstra was born in the Netherlands and is married to a career diplomat. They both served in North Yemen, Tanzania, United Kingdom, Mali, Spain, South Africa and now in New York
MARION de VOS trained as a teacher of French and as translator French, English and Dutch. She is also fluent in Spanish and German, plays the piano and the guitar, is amateur ornithologist and makes drawings and aquarelles. Nature, human nature and her nomad life are her main inspiration.
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