Ruth Thompson: Poet & Channel

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Whale Fall reading at Poetry Flash

“Whale Fall” Reading at Poetry Flash, 2017.

rtrt • March 12, 2025

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Having a Drink With My Daughter At the Casa Del Mar

She is a Renoir rising from this gilded half shell, a shining
Van Gogh sunflower, a tree full of August apricots.

She throws the banners of her laughter into the coffered ceilings
and the castle awakens. The waiters leap to serve her.

Outside the window, a Breugel: skaters and strollers and dogs
and a sun just beginning to drop over a stitched seam of surfers.

Lights go on in the fish place down on the pier, where we used to go
when she was a baby, when living in Santa Monica was cheap.

I think of that restaurant in the Trastevere, where every night
she toddled into the kitchen to visit, bright and uninhibited as a robin.

I remember my body shaking, and her crowning at last – no pale
Botticelli angel but black-haired and vivid and yelling like Kali.

Now I pray to the gods of clean tablecloths, plein air.
The ghosts seat themselves around the table, waiting to be fed.

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