Alfred Starr Hamilton

Ocean

by Alfred Starr Hamilton

Gloom green spreads her white cloak
Along the shorelines – Picks up her laughter,
Fraught of lambs and starts of laughter,
Spreads her glee along the coastal lines

Gloom green spreads her white cloak
Along the shorelines – Flips her skirts that little
Folds it carefully, Tides it for awhile, Though
Recovers it gently, Riffles and Rumples itself
And back against the oncoming green gloom beautiful



Words Ends

by Alfred Starr Hamilton

If a man walketh within a city
Is he shaped of that city around
The waistline of the river’s end

If a man talketh within a city
Shaped his words of that city around
The tongue line of the river’s bend

For if a man thinketh within a city
Draped his thoughts of that city around
There is soot and smoke above the river’s bend

Of his thoughts of the down of a thistle
And leaves his talk tongued around
The mainline between the city’s end

For if a man screameth within a city
Sire shaped of the city, around
The noon whistles at the head of the bend

His dreams are of time and a whistle
His talk is smoky fast shaped around
The tongue line of the hired city’s bend

And he is the talk of the city
And he is the shape of that city
And what are his words of that city, around
And around the great city’s bends


Alfred Starr Hamilton (1914–2005) was an American poet from Montclair, N.J. The Song Cave has recently published the first collection of Hamilton’s poetry to appear in over 40 years, “A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton” (Edited by Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal). This volume is available through Small Press Distribution.

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