Sea Shanty: A Pseudo-Sonnet

 

Sea Shanty: A Pseudo-Sonnet

 

there’s a narrow inlet

just off the seafront promenade

in Old Saybrook, where

the low wind makes a Lilliputian

surf of wavelets, all two inches tall

 

listen! They’re whispering

a kind of ocean baby-talk,

going – flip-lisp-flip-lisp

I sometimes sit and monitor

as grayness from the sea and sky

 

comes over the gray gravel

in a hiss of effervescence,

as the wave hesitates

before it turns, top of the swash, 

and slides back down to the sea

 

 Charles D. Tarlton

 

Charles D. Tarlton is a retired politics professor who has been writing poetry and short prose since 2006. He lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter, and a black female standard poodle named Nikki.  

 He published poetry since 2006 has appeared in Jack Magazine, Shampoo, Review Americana, Tipton, Barnwood, Abramelin, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, The Houston Literary Review, Simply Haiku, Haibun Today, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Atlas Poetica, Contemporary Haibun Online, Blue and Yellow Dog, Shot Glass, Sketchbook, Skylark, Six Minute Magazine, Cricket Online Review, Red Booth Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Rattle, Dark Matter, Muse India, Inner Art Journal, Prune Juice, Ekphrastic Review, Blackbox Manifold (UK), Undertow Tanka Review, Spirit Wind Gallery, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Ribbons, Unbroken Journal, KYSO Flash, Ekphrastic Review, tinywords, Red Lights, The Journal (UK), Tallow Eider Quarterly, The American Aesthetic, London Grip, Book Ends Review, Ilanot Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Peacock  Journal, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Nebo, and Palette.