‘THE MOURNFUL MAN & THE SEA’

Enrique García is a proud (dis)-abled person of color who has persevered despite many mental and physical health complications. He recently graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His photography, poetry, and prose can be found in various issues of Transfer Magazine.

THE MOURNFUL MAN & THE SEA 

Cruel Sea, 

how merciless you are!  

Your waves toss ships & men 

like matchsticks & smash them 

to smithereens on the rocks. 

Sailors, fishermen, goods, slaves, 

the victor with the vanquished: drowned, defeated, lost! 

Kind Sir, 

it is not I, 

but the winds. 

When they fall upon me 

they give me no rest. 

But seek me in my mildness, 

now, while they are away, 

& I will show you of what tenderness is made.

Peter J. Grieco is a musician, songwriter, and retired school bus driver from Buffalo, NY. His poems have been widely published in small magazines on-line and in print. His book length series of poems include “At the Musarium,” a collection of semi-procedural verse based on word frequency lists, “Misinterpretations of Dreams,” a series which interrogates Freud's seminal study of dream life, "Structuralist Poetics," which attempts to come to terms with post-structuralism, & "A Week on the Concord & Merrimac." celebrating Thoreau. His collection of ekphrastic verse, “The Blind Man's Meal,” is available from Finishing Line Press.