In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

I WILL STAY THERE FOR YOU for Phyllis Hoge Thompson Honolulu 2/5/7T If, in what passes for winter here, you weary of guava-colored moons, the gloss of blue days that hover like a friend who prides herself on sincerety, If even the green upheaval of a January storm, stalking up from Kona and whipping the ironwoods about like crazed Tahitian dancers, only deepens your lassitude, plants in your mouth a taste for gales more elemental. for the white angled clamp of pure winter, call me. Tell me only your own "Potter's Cove": bitter wind, the hint of failure in the needling rain, your tentative voice calling out over ocean. Then moon or no moon, sleet, or the still white bone-eating cold of December, I'll go down to the shingle at Humarock and from the barnacled lip of that sea I'll pry up three flat stones to build an offering where the breakers lick. And swaddled in wool over wool, I'll lean into talons of spray, grow featureless with cold and the ribbons of flung kelp In my hair. I'll lose my voice shouting your name. DON JOHNSON* •DON JOHNSONteaches English at Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He has just completed a nine-month stay in Hawaii where he finished up the manuscript for his first book of poems, Reeling in the Dark. Recent publications have been in Quarterly West and Poetry. VOL. 34. NO. 1 (WINTER 1980) ...

pdf

Share