"Mela," Barry Spacks

Mela, mela, how it pleases,
Greek for "honey"--word so small
you can write it in the cold hard sand
in the time between two waves.

From The Hope of the Air.

Barry Spacks is the author of nine poetry collections. Ploughshares has some poems in their archives, and you can also find "The Poet's Game" and the experimental "A Run of Bumpers" (in which each "bumper" must have exactly 84 characters) online, along with several others. See, for example, the Fall 1996 issue of The 2River View, which includes "Free Thursday" and "What's Left."