Category Archives: Tyler Bigney

THE BEACH

The beach – dead seaweed, broken glass,
brown filtered cigarette butts pushed down into sand.
I walked to see boats, waves, perpetually
white-capped. The war between my brain
and my heart has not yet reached its climax,
but soon my bedroom will be a champagne bottle,
toasting in celebration, or toasting goodbye.
I fumble with my glass mutely, eyes on my shoes.
I raise my head up, but there’s only me, the beach,
my feet dug into cold sand. My grandmother riding in,
in front of a sad sky, on a red rocking horse,
like the picture my father has of her taped to the
top corner of his dresser mirror. The world needs
more gardens. I want to write a love poem that will speak
to the masses, hummingbirds a metaphor for the heart.
No one writes love poems, they’re too hard, or it hurts,
or the heart is too tricky a subject to handle.
In front of me right now – a ghost, some blackbirds
above the Northumberland Strait, a thousand dead
jellyfish, belly up, glowing under a sunless sky.