[Poetry] Two Poems by William Swick

Ocean Breathe

 Sunrise and sometimes sunset

Ocean Breathe

                                                                                                Liquid sky seen from darkened depth

     Ride

          Out

                 With

                                     The

                                                Tide

Merge with the sea

In rhythm inhale

Exhale creative bankruptcy

Ocean Breathe

Glide smooth surface to rocky bed

Pelican fly free   

                                                Meditate   Drift into   

                                                                                                Sea and Sky      

Pelican

We regard each other from different places

I face the sea, my back to the seething, teeming city

The pelican faces the sprawl, behind an endless ocean

Perched on a buoy

While I cling to sinking sand

I imagine the bird’s freedom, the open air and ocean

With beating of heart and wing

Without thought of pension or power

Would the pelican be envious of me?

My life?

 My worries are of deep philosophy

Not of the next meal or of survival

The pelican’s freedom is struggle

Is my struggle freedom?

The pelican and I turn with one last furtive look

Wings flap, and the bird is gone,

I shuffle toward the city,

Shoulders slumped

To fly is folly

William Swick is an experimental writer and poet. He discovered writing and poetry during the pandemic, when he worked as a physical therapist assistant in The Covid Wing/Covid Intensive Care Unit. Using his complete lack of formal training to use poetry and prose as a blunt instrument and a torch against the darkness. While unpublished, his work can be found scrawled on dumpsters and bathroom walls from his native Pennsylvania to his current home in Fort Lauderdale Florida