Share This Poem: “Angelus: Chesapeake Bay,” by Ron Smith.
BROAD STREET invites you to enjoy this poem from our “Maps & Legends” issue. It’s presented here as a broadside to download and print out — or you can scroll past and read the whole poem in plain text.
Angelus: Chesapeake Bay
This is where the creek empties,
where the speck spook
in the eelgrass. I’m no
fisherman and everybody
knows it.
Heavy line, light
lure — how much of my life
doesthatsum up?
Shuffle and shoal
in the purblind glare. We haul in
rocks and reds — or they do, mostly.
The air’s thick with salt and funk.
Hot, I say.
The captain’s grave eyes . . .
It’s five years now. I’m still out there,
a seagull, hovering angel watching them
reeling me in.
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Ron Smith recently served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia, and he is the Writer-in-Residence at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond.
His books are Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery, Moon Road, Its Ghostly Workshop, and The Humility of the Brutes.
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