Crush Depth.

Crush Depth

Michael Spence

Truman State University Press

100 East Normal Street, Kirksville, MO 63501-4221

9781931112901, $15.95, www.tsup.truman.edu

Poets come in all shapes and sizes, including Navy men. "Crush Depth" is a collection of poetry from Michael Spence, a veteran Naval officer with much military and life experience. Discussing naval life through his verse, he does well in capturing the emotion along with the day to day life he lived. "Crush Depth" is original, fresh, and educational, and highly recommended. "A Cairns Idyll": Oblivious to starfish chewing up/The coral of the Great Barrier reef,/While Dad walks off for tickets for our trip//To watch its vanishing, I lounge and leaf/Through Chaucer as a palm tree pricks my back./The fronds clack overhead--tongues gone stiff//With salt and sun. I can't keep track/Of where the story leads, trying to ignore/The sea beyond me. Medieval spellings frac-//Ture my attention, and my eyes grow sore/From footnotes. I try to raise lust for the wench/of Bath while waves pull sparks of light ashore.//A thump! I feel through my buttocks makes me flinch: The coconut rocks to a stop. I shift to a bench.