Michael Milligan

Trawling

there goes
The green unraveller,
His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose
Dylan Thomas

Me, I'm whoever. Reeling in my dimness.
The sea surface a splendored mirror
I fell into. Down, down, down.
Besieged in our ocean trenches
whoever we want to be depends on uncertainties.
On perspective.

Sirens called, it was a week ago now,
leaning wrong letters into wrong wind – I missed
that song— but who attends to recitations
by near strangers? Do you? I submerge my own wishes
far too deep even for rapture. Fishing lines above
drip with light. Better your sweet heart overcome
than lost in the drowned hall I walk
when memory begins its green unraveling.

Michael Milligan has worked as a construction laborer, migrant fruit and grape picker, homestead farmer and graphic arts production manager. He is a survivor. He took his MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College, co-founded Poetry Oasis Worcester and was privileged to be an editor with Diner. His poetry book reviews, fiction and poems have appeared in Agni, Diner, The New Orleans Review, The Valparaiso Review, Chaffin Journal, Blue Earth Review and others.