Staring at the Sea

By Sean Phelan

Finally, a book of poems for a society that could not possibly care less about a book of poems. A book of poems that can be alternatively humorous and dark; visionary and quotidian. A book of poems for those who enjoy the poetry of Whitman, Ginsberg, Dickinson, Cummings, and a much less well known (and appreciated) bard named Sancho Panza. A book of poems that describe a life (or perhaps many lives) in the process of being lived, and, most importantly, experienced. A book of poems for YOU, the one who needs it most!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 9, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440119989

Sean Phelan

Sean Phelan is a practicing attorney (the nice kind), and proud graduate of Villanova University and Villanova University School of Law. He has previously published two other books, Coming of Age and Staring at the Sea. He lives in Philadelphia, PA and is the increasingly patient owner of a black lab rescue pup named Jimbo.

Book preview

Contents

I.MORNING

II.NIGHT

III.MOURNING

IV.KNIGHT-ERRANT

V.SANCHO PANZAS (a more interesting character than the Don?)

- For too many people to name, other than as Angels, (and a few devils), in the flesh.

I. MORNING

My love shall in my verse ever live young. - Shakespeare

Nostalgia (For Joanie D’arcy)

Crimson and yellow blur

Against October blue.

Burning leaves and fireplaces

Leaving spirits swirling,

Like incense in the

Tiny old chapel.

The sun comes up slowly,

Streaming past henna leaves

Stuck to your mother’s windshield

As she drives you to school

On Michaelmas morning.

Sharp fall air

That burns your lungs

And amber afternoons

With daylight fading quickly,

After summers chasing butterflies

Through barmy, hilly meadows.

Your garden friendships with

Ghosts of pets

On slate stone walks.

Footsteps that pass you by

Underneath your bedroom door

When you lie awake.

Whispers on the stairs,

Outdoor breezes in the window stars,

Your brown little teakwood desk.

The morning sun showing gray with dust

On its surfaces.

Sometimes you don’t want to remember,

But these same sounds and images

Always recur.

The narrow corridors.

Shoes outside the doors.

Coats hung on hallstand pegs.

The lavatory with the taupe broken window pane

And flaky yellow paint.

Rosemary’s having a bath.

A radio on in the room you pass

(Leonard Bernstein?…Glen Gould?)

Striking single notes and

Listening to their long decay.

As you play the Baby Grand Steinway

You often swing your torso

In a counterclockwise motion.

Waltzes lit from downstairs parlors.

Music from the gramophone in the hall.

Your Rosemary’s on the terrace playing bridge.

These are the first late-August signs

Of early autumn,

A softness in the fading colors.

A house that was warm and dim,

Spacious and grim.

Old clocks

And narrow lanes;

Stately rooms

And candelabras.

You’ll know much more about yourself once you’ve had a sleep,

More than you could possibly imagine (or even dream).

There is silence in the room again

Your soft, windy lovemakings by the seaside.

Your morning swims in the seaspray breeze.

You sit smiling by the old summer house,

Still beautiful, on the front porch steps,

Holding a child in your lap.

That lonely, bittersweet murmur on a Sunday afternoon,

Special and only for you.

Solitude is what you now know

And do not fear,

Like petals fallen

From a vase of roses,

Like seasons changed.

You read this with me in mind

Thinking of all the smiles you gave

And tears (of joy) you cried…

Knowing now

For perhaps the first time in your life

That there is nothing to fear.

You trusted in Mother’s Providence

And now

You trust in God’s.

Best part of the day it was -

The morning hymn.

Fall Is:

It was one of those plangent autumn evenings streaked with late sunlight that seemed itself a memory of what sometime in the far past had been the blaze of noon. – John Banville

Fall in Pennsylvania is ginger snaps and cold milk;

A tingle of air, a gold leaf falling.

Beholding the child

Among his newborn blisses

Divebombing a pile

Of morning leaves

On grasses icy-wet with dew.

Fall is living by premonitions,

Ignoring momma’s admonitions,

Frolicking through the hillocks and fragrant sweet briers

Sans jacket or autumn sweater.

Eyes dazzled by a blaze of noontime sunlight

Falling down through the vast panes.

Fall is my dog, Abbey -

Sad, tawny, and sweet as sweet can be -

Waiting for me, curled up in her little doggy bed

In the sunlit afternoon.

Fall is dogwood days

So full of bloom/decay.

A smell like something in between

Horse manure and burning leaves;

A compostual snuffle of the leaves

(Crunched underfoot).

Fall is the bright blue transparent air

The brazen sunlight,

The shadows lengthening

And the Sunday silence;

*        *        *        *        *        *        *

Down the seashore in the fall

The waves seem to teem

With leftover heat

And the washed over footprints

Of young summer lovers.

The sea, with the gales groaning saltily

In beachfront chimneys;

Late afternoon.

Fall is just the kind of weather

That I have always loved best,

Clear and sumptuous and stimulating

On the brink of a tempest

In the gloaming dusk.

Fall is the time to work,

(As both Hemingway and Pushkin would agree).

Fall is meanings making themselves, believing

Instead of demeaning,

In the lessoning leaves and

Frigid nighttime stars.

Fall is a season where only melancholy,

And not fear,

Can reside.

Our Love still above us,

Holding everything so still.

Reading the Book of Revelation With Mom While Watching

The Sun Rise Slowly Over the Ocean

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. – Revelation 22:17

The morning star is Christ Himself,

Standing on the sea

With feet of burnished bronze,

Dappling the placid waves

With His shining lampstand of inspiration,

And spiraling it towards our

Babylonian shores.

The waves carry the horizon’s happy news.

On the seventh hour,

Of the seventh day,

Remembering never again to abandon the love we shared at first,

Unworthily, our eyes behold His golden scroll –

The fruit for which our souls so long.

In the sea of glass mixed with fire –

All that was, is, and is still yet to come!

The waves carry the horizon’s happy news.

It is Sunday morning all over the world (For Walt and For Greg and Joanne Stigliano)

There’s nothing to life but just the living of it. – W.E. Woodward

It is Sunday morning all over the world

and I go out traveling to find it

with my hobo rucksack

and Whitman mind

I start under the pastel park grays of big cities,

centers of industry, claustrophobia, and catastrophe

pushing past the wrought iron gates and picketing fences

until there are no walls at all

moving fast, yet embracing everything

through vale and swale

wharf and wasteland,

tomb and tenement

past highways, oceans, and mountains

the firs are motionless in the cold blue morning

atop the lonely hills

church bells ring through the fresh air of small towns

the golden morning and children’s hymns

soaring like birds

the smells of pastries and oven-fresh baguettes

I pass and am invited into countless homes

With bare wood floors and marble floors and dirt floors and even floors with thick rich