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      November 4, 2010The Waving GirlDonald Smyth

      When I think of the girl standing
      at river’s edge, arms uplifted as
      if crying for divine intervention,
      I think of Savannah and its stately

       

       

      homes and squares, but I also think
      of longing run awry, but isn’t that
      part of what love is about, longing
      unfulfilled? She stands alone there,

       

       

      towel waving at passing ships, awaiting
      the sailor-lover who will never come.
      The Waving Girl of Savannah. The sun
      was sunny side up, yolk lava hot, when

       

       

      I first saw her standing there. I
      wanted more than anything, more than
      asking Christ what he really felt about
      Roman soldiers, to have a conversation

       

       

      with her, the city light-tender’s sister,
      but bronze lips never move. They just
      burn in the sun and chill in the night
      like the rest of us.

      from #24 - Winter 2005

      Donald Smyth

      “From early days, I aspired to write. Before I could read, in rural Oklahoma, I dictated country songs to my mother. After reading Whitman, I said maybe. After Keats, Housman, Dickinson, Lowell, Eliot, Stevens, Crane and so many others, I said, yes: I want to write poetry—be a poet.”

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