Liminal

Ron Stottlemyer

Not even a casual glance

from the manta ray slowly gliding by.

Solitary, majestic, fins billowing

softly like sheer curtains

stirring in a large airy suite at the Savoy.

Insouciant cabinet minister,

party whip, moving without haste.

Trim in his morning waistcoat, he undulates

farther into the milky blue,

then all at once vanishes,

leaving me with stolid groupers cued up

like cabbies along the Strand.

After a long career in college/university teaching and scholarship, Ron retired in 2014, devoting his energies to his long-deferred passion for writing poetry.  To date, he has published widely around the country. He has also been awarded a Pushcart  Prize for his poem, "Falling," (Twyckenham Notes, Autumn 2018), which appears in  volume XLVI of the Pushcart anthology. His poems may be found in Saltillo, Alabama Literary Review, Blue Earth Review, JuxtaProse, MockingHeart Review, Peregrine, Rust & Moth, Stirring, South Florida Poetry Journal, Split Rock Review, Streetlight Magazine, Temenos, The American Journal of Poetry, The Chattahoochee Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Sublunary Review, The Worchester Review, Twyckenham Notes, and The Midwest Quarterly, forthcoming summer, 2025. He is currently looking for a publisher for his debut collections of poetry.