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| (Image from Gleneden Beach Community Club) |
One
You think I am
there—even
expect me to be—
as you extract
the lake from
sodium sand,
with your Keds
ultraviolet
in the moonlight.
Vainly, you look
for me—just like
you search for the
specter terns,
costumed by night,
whose crying
above you
hallucinates
into a noctural sky
of wailing stars.
Two
Moaning seagulls
mock my orgasmic
anthem, as my
exhausted knees
dig into
the gritty linen of
his cool bed,
succumbing to
my flailing muscles.
For, I am there—
just as I have been
the sixty-five times
before—rotting with
the brine fly pupal
casings, breathing
ripples in the water,
making love to
the beach.
-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., Small All White in the Forest)
"I am no barrier to its sun; the light and I are as one!"
My Poetic Notes:
The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: The original "Saltair I" and "Saltair II" Resorts used to be located in Salt Lake City, Utah on the Great Salt Lake, which is west of the Salt Lake International Airport. And, in the late 1980s, it was just "a road," with some old pilings protruding from the lake and from "the road."
And my first gay friend Greg introduced me to Saltair Beach in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the original "Saltair I" and "Saltair II" Pavilions both stood—before fire and fortune destroyed them both! And that is how I came to know and love this place "away from civilization," where I could commune with nature. [Please see "Saltair Beach-Inspired Poem (in Salt Lake City Utah)" in labels for my poems about Saltair.] You can still see the pilings from these once magnificent structures, along with the cement shell of the old power building.
And, way back in the late 1980s, Greg and I used to walk along 'the road' that lead out to the lake where the original "Saltair I" and "Saltair II" Pavilions once stood—and we would go there during storms in order to watch how the weather would interact with the Great Salt Lake!
And so, Greg told me this one time that he had been at the beach and he said that he could feel my presence there—as if he practically expected to see me there too! So, I wrote this poem with the "One" representing the time Greg was there (and expected me to be there also) and with the "Two" representing that time that I was actually there "relieving sexual tensions," so to speak, at the beach, while I was fantasizing that I was making love to another male.
And this poem was also published on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blog (please see the hyperlink below for the blog), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message that I am trying to convey through "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer."
This poem was written in Salt Lake City, Utah.
-Paulee
https://paulwhitingwriting.blogspot.com
This "Small All White in the Forest" Post No. 026 was edited on September 6th, 2023.
"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]
