five my father hears the island language no one but he can understand, moon sound
birthed as pearls
that wash up on the shore, hopelandic, split by wind and salt,
to fabricate
with quartz and calcium, a colony beneath the sea deep inside the coral boy who has my
daddy’s eyes, and mine,
blue waters stripped from Lake Louise, west Canada, so far from here or Iceland’s placid
touchdown, wave through reef.
Valerie Duff’s poems have recently appeared in Mom Egg Review, The Common, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. She is the author of To the New World; her second book of poems, Aquamarine, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2021. She is a freelance writer and contributing editor to The Critical Flame.
