George Wallace is a highly original modern poet with a style that combines surrealism with Beat sensibility. He's the Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York (ancestral home of Walt Whitman, Harry Chapin and Blue Oyster Cult) and has performed at many LitKicks readings.

American Sycamore

by George Wallace

sometimes instead of your eyes i climb a ladder of birds

sometimes instead of your tide i peel back the bark of the world

sometimes instead of your lips i place a fingertip to the wind

to the east the moon is out; to the west the moon is out too

a horseshoe crab steers between two moons, how rare our love is!

we sit speechless under the shade of an enormous sycamore

a scroll of blue mist rises from the folds of centershore road

some day i will place the tip of my thumb against an orange sun

as it hums its way across still water in the direction of connecticut

and i will block it out