Poetry Submissions

Visit the exhibition and assemble a "Collage Poem" using the Gallery Guide for Families. View submitted poems, below.

By Mary C., age 10, from Tall Timbers
Shadows in the mist

Shadows in the mist
blanket of darkness
distant dreaming
drifting, floating sadness
reflection of hope
in the fog
shadows in the mist


By Christy L., age 59, from Wareham
No, don't move

No, don't move
Stay a bit
Look. Now look again
Deeper, longer
Ah!


By Paul S., age 53, from Rocky Hill
Starbuck

Inflated ignorance in war's brutality.
The past is passed; why moralize upon it?
The great oceans of the sea and space
blend as one interflowing sea—
a phrase said, possibly,
by someone called Queequeg.

Hear the pounding surf of vast change.
Its riveting wider than yesterday's
groggy space between drydocked ships—
a threadbare image of Ahab at war.
Although his mind is long, long,
ago beaten to a mound of sand,
in the whale, in our foam, the forming phantom breeches with each swish of wave, and constricts the nature of things, so neither is knowledge or wisdom, but a captain's dishonor. Melville's fame.

At least that's a way to interpret
a flaw in the soundest of instincts
and deepest intelligence of Starbuck,
who, only God knows why, stayed
with the Pequod to feed his despair.

His thwarted desire to flee
a widening scope of neglectful thoughts
seems inseparable with me and others
who crawl this red tide bounding with wolves.