Gloucester by Brian Finlay and Perspective by Sarah Zuidema

Gloucester                                                                              Brian Finlay

Gloucester is the name of a city

But it is not a city,

It is a world

            And in this world dwell its people

            They are a mix of individuals

            There are good, there are bad

                        Artists, Poets, Fishermen, Drug Dealers, Killers, Rats

                        The likes of which you’ve seen before

                        In magazines, and art exhibits, and news reports that make you cry

It’s housed many kinds of each

Over the years

Same famous

Some not

            All maniacs in their own right

            Some maniacs in what they write

This island is home to great ones

Heroes and Thinkers

Men who work for glory

            For the name of their family

            And the acceptance of their trade brothers

They hang out in dingy, badly lit rooms

Smoking and exchanging tales of worthless women and drunken brawls

Maximus lived here,

            In Gloucester

He breathed his soul into the sea

And regretted nothing

            Except that he would live forever
***
Perspective                                                                       Sarah Zuidema

The air was brisk and cool,
The breeze filtered cleanly through the feathers,
While gleefully he observed the stark blue of the sky above,
and the water below.
The shore he fled was spotted orange and red with foliage,
as bright and burning as the sun.
He shivered under the shade of the wings,
Up he would go,
Beyond the chilly undercurrents of the sea's wind
To the welcoming rays of the sun.
The higher he flew, the more sun he felt on his back,
Strange, he thought, that the feathers should so quickly let in light.
In the distance he heard the shrieks of the birds and the yelps of
people on the shore,
How jealous they are of my flight.
He chuckled at the way the world leapt higher and higher to reach him.
It was overzealous to match his accomplishment,
But only he could reach the sun.

Wait.
The faces blinked back at him from the sun,
and the sky gained life and texture as the world got closer.
The fisherman yanked a catch from among the clouds,
and the farmer collected the harvest he had grown among the fiery forest.
The commoners had stolen his prize,
they'd beat him too it.

He passed his father in his climb,
But wait,
His father was falling!
Rescue him?
He tried to fly to catch him,
but his wings would not let him dive.


The sky was much wetter than he had imagined,
Perhaps he had not fallen up.