Oh to stroll the Oklahoma coast now that the hollyhock is in bloom and my love has returned and her hair's in my tub and her smudged socks clutter the bedroom floor and her Subaru leaks its indiscreet spot of oil in the driveway. All my ripe desire is plucked -- I'm left to think of what I cannot have and feel its lack like an intoxicant. Oh to pack a big picnic and explore the brackish shallow tidepools of the Tulsa Gulf, where the skittery sandpiper makes his earnest rounds, and gulls wheel and pivot overhead, where after a rain the waves are grayish-blue and the jagged Alps of Iowa rise in the north like a kept promise. I miss already that pebbled stretch of sand I've never seen, my love hunched against some salty gust as she tests the water with a naked foot. Oh Oklahoma shore, the mere thought of you is enough to render charmless the Hanging Gardens of Utah and shame Indianapolis' grand canals. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AMORETTI: 34 by EDMUND SPENSER THE MAYFLOWERS by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE SONG OF THE DIAL by PETER AIREY THE SAILOR; A ROMAIC BALLAD by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM RED TREASURE by CAROLYN AUSTIN |