The Poem: Cutchogue, April 1, 41.0107° N, 72.4851° W

“Thought provoking and cunning, Miranda Beeson has more than a knack to lead the reader through a well thought out event. Accomplished in her art, she invites us to sit on the passenger side of her pen and steer us down her lane of view.”

— Beacon Poetry Editor Billy Hands

Cutchogue, April 1, 41.0107° N, 72.4851° W

by Miranda Beeson

The fish hawk is back, surveying his nest from his usual perch
— an edifice of twigs, twisted sea grass, popped rainbow
birthday balloons, a red shred of t-shirt, the glitter of tinfoil
from picnics on the beach—the detritus of man.

Soon his mate will arrive from the tip of a peninsula
in French Guiana, squeezing the earth’s magnetic field
for signs pointing north over the Caribbean, to Hispaniola,
Cuba, riding the thermals twenty-seven hundred miles home.

Somewhere on the Aegean between Turkey and Greece,
citizens are squeezed together in zodiacs that know nothing
of stars. They huddle under the weight of water-logged
life jackets and fear—a tiny motor sputtering its way

toward unfamiliar lights over a sea of broken paddles,
backpacks, glittering lost cities.

Miranda Beeson is a writer, teacher, and MFA candidate at Stony Brook Southampton. She lives in Cutchogue & NYC.

The Beacon is accepting poetry submissions at poetry@eastendbeacon.com.