MARC WOODWARD

Gulf Breeze
For Debra Stogner, Pensacola, FL.

All night the wind shakes my Panhandle door,
bringing rain from Louisiana and the gulf.
Weatherman says by morning it’ll ease.
Then I’ll wander out for brunch, skirting round
camellia blooms afloat on sidewalk puddles.
It’s nearly Mardi Gras and even here
on the front porches of shotgun houses
Blesséd Virgins wear strings of gaudy beads
and trilby’d Gabriels watch impassively.
At last night’s reading a poet told me 
how, when she was a girl in New Orleans,
club owners stuck brown paper bags on doors.
If your skin was lighter they’d let you in.
“We loved our Gulf Breeze then. All night it blew,
ripping those paper bags down to the drain,
And when we could we showed the wind the way.”

Marc Woodward is a musician and poet writing from rural Devon, England. Widely published, he has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, commended for the Acumen and Aesthetica prizes and won the 2025 Hippocrates International Prize. He’s published four full length collections, the most recent being Shaking The Persimmon Tree and Grace Notes (Sea Crow Press, 2022 and 2023). www.marcwoodwardpoetry.blogspot.com