Island by Allan Kaplan

Island
A lasso leaps from the ancient fisherman’s
long fingers collaring the pier post,
as the foredeck lifts him like a ballerina:
the swells stretching the sea
like worn trousers about to tear.

Night: The waves’ mob roar chases
the old poet’s ministers of body and soul
beyond the broken clam shells, rags
of seaweed: moon-shimmering wavelets
wash over his toes like petrified stones.

A yacht, partnered to a dancing buoy, wobbles
like a mime doing his coming-home-drunk—
dawn’s opening skit!

About the Poet
Allan Kaplan spends much daytime alone writing and revising, or watching endless late night movies with wife. Books: Paper Airplane (Harper & Row) Like One of Us (Untitled). Poems appeared in journals of various persuasions over the years; i.e.  Poetry, Apalachee Quarterly, Paris Review, Iowa Review, Quarterly Review of Literature, Washington Square Review, Barrow Street, Wind, Folio, Gulf Stream, Widener Review, Nimrod, MPQR and Bad Penny Review.