Gen 1:4
There is a small independent bookstore in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, that I would drop in to and search through piles and piles of poetry collections. Some of them were used, others were waiting to be used. The ones I picked up now occupy a small spot in my makeshift book shelf. There is one that I particularly care for called “Drunken Jonah” by Dermot McCarthy. Whenever I feel stunted lyrically, intellectually, or spiritually even, I can open this small poetry book by an unknown author in Canada, and find something as familiar as a baby blanket. Here is one of my favorite pieces of his.
so he made the sea and dry land
sea wrought,
dreamt the tempest in a belch
after death’s cabbage rose,
did so, yes, against the eye, vanity
they thought there was a plan
the fools
and a vertical song some canticle
of saving
but I, Jonah
had seen the plot lugged by a dwarf
in a dream I forgot
idiot song in a darkening cell,
a blonde man drawing light.
-Dermot McCarthy, Drunken Jonah, 1979
