John Beaton Poems

Whale-breath blasts up through the moonlight
in a bubble-net of vapor;
trade-winds catch the spout and droplets
stream through palm baleen on Maui.
...

Hie me to the hill-ground,
the high hill ground of Scotland,
to battle bladed wind-blasts
my forebears fought before me,
...

I'm wakened, drawn toward the ice-thin window,
to witness scenes as faint and still as death.
How bleak the moon; how bare the trees and meadows;
sky's pale maw overhangs
...

Well, I went for a walk last Halloween
on the scariest night you've ever seen.
and to prove to myself I was not afraid
I went to a place where the dead are laid:
...

It starts with lightning, tinder, and a gust.
Smoke-jumper teams, at this stage, may contain it—
clad in Nomex, ‘chuting down to dust
they rip along the fireline like a bayonet,
...

Step with me, float with me, over the floor;
weave with me, waltz with me, out through the door;
slide to the deck where the crowdedness clears;
glide through the garden and tear off your fears.
...

The Weeping Window bleeds ceramic poppies
that blush St. Magnus's cathedral wall
and each seems miniscule among them all—
the throng comprises nigh a million copies:
...

(for snow)

You lit upon the land one night,
a night of drifting lightness
...

The mayflies ride the glides in slow procession
above the burbling eddies' low percussion;
their up-wings test the airs and dance in twitches.
His toe-taps and his fiddle-notes commingle,
...

In Living Colour

From parting seas, the grey's great knuckled back,
where barnacles and orange whale-lice ride,
...