for Gary Beaumier
Today, as you stomp snow-boots beside the carp and wheel of seagulls then mince your steps precise and cautious so as not to tumble, crack bones to ice think of me shoulder to shoulder beside you the way it used to be when we were too young to know a thing except that our faces chapped under February winds off Lake Michigan. Let memory mix into sea’s morass of gray and speckled white flat as a plateau of fractured granite. Sea lifts and sobs its heavy stone as if in after-shocks. Eons, eons ago there was a mountain where the lake is. Eons, eons on, perhaps again. Dawn sun sends a lava in flux between wave caps. Peer for me into what is vast, what was and how what was bleeds into today. How crimson teems anew each dawn. Then think of me, old friend – half a year and more removed – as I hold this cup of coffee to my lips to swallow the rich, deep darkness of going on.
Ed Ruzicka
Ed Ruzicka has published four full-length books of poetry, most recentlyIn the Wind, by Sligo Creek Publishing. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canaryand many other literary publications. He has had poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been a finalist for the Dana Award and the New Millennium Award. Ed is also president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana. He was born in small-town corn country just outside of Chicago. He is and will forever remain a Chicago Cubs fan. Ed attended college in Racine Wisconsin and learned to play the flute on the shores of Lake Michigan. Ed has two adult children. He lives quietly as a retired occupational therapist under the green of live oak trees in Baton Rouge, LA with his warm and caring wife, Renee.