Shore Line

By Carl Rakosi 1903–2004 Carl Rakosi

We speak of mankind.

Why not wavekind?

Barrel-chested military water

rushes in a mass

to break the shore earth

into stonekind.

Pphlooph pphlooph

the waves grope

indistinctly for the shore.

As delicate

as a butterfly

along a cheek

a boat with white

and orange sail appears.

A small boy in a life-belt

sits in front and looks ahead

with all his might.

His father steers,

attached like a shaft

to his son’s safety

and the sail’s management.

A sunfish thrown back by a fisherman

lies drowned and pitching.

The eyes are white in death.

This is the raw data.

A mystery translates it

into feeling and perception;

then imagination;

finally the hard

inevitable quartz

figure of will

and language.

Thus a squirrel tail flying

from a handlebar

unmistakably establishes

its passing rider

as a male unbowed

in a chipper plume.

Carl Rakosi, “Shore Line” from The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (Orono: The National Poetry Foundation, 1986). Used with the permission of Marilyn J. Kane.

Source: The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986)

Biography

The son of German Jewish parents, Carl Rakosi was born in Berlin in 1903, moving soon to Hungary following his parents’ separation in 1904. Immigrating with his father and stepmother to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1910, he eventually graduated from the University of Wisconsin (where he edited the literary magazine) and later earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. Rakosi’s involvement in the . . .

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