The Ocean Beach Pier
Whole families casting lines
Into black water
*
The restaurant
Is so well-tended the birds
Go elsewhere to eat
*
In the lobster tank
The piled-up lobsters seem dead
Or to be dreaming
*
Through binoculars
The cars moving on the bridge
Seem barely to move
*
Slender cypresses
A Roman poet called you
Candles of darkness
*
The coyote lopes
Down the street in the evening
His ribs prominent
*
The rapacious owls
Rest till dusk in the tall trees
Above tiny skulls
*
Every hour the bell
In the Catholic belfry
The pine is heedless
Harry Thomas
Harry Thomas has edited two books for Penguin UK, Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy and Montale in English, has done two books for UnGyve Press, Some Complicity and The Truth of Two: Selected Translations, and has two books coming out this year, Poems about Trees, an anthology, and The Occasional Demon, 36 Poems of Primo Levi, translated with Marco Sonzogni.
Also by Harry Thomas (see all)
- Eight Haiku - February 9, 2020
- Lovework - September 22, 2019
- Introduction to Poems About Trees - February 18, 2019
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