Monday, July 29, 2019



—HOW MANY SLAMS IN AN OLD SCREEN DOOR?


             On Cisco Beach
                  for Donna



On Cisco Beach

This house,
still a stranger,
whispers, Relax 
whispers, Trust me
though you’ve never
thought to question
a building before.
You press your fingers
against the window
like a lover testing the heat of
a pillowcase or stubbled cheek
and watch the glass pucker coyly.
Outside the waves have
their own conch shell song,
eternity swirling inside the
burnished curl of a horn,
nothing you haven’t heard before,
but nothing you’ve ever
been able to understand either.
Across the road,
sea grass stumbles and re-crosses itself,
drunk in the gusts,
slurring, I’m a little unsteady. 
slurring, Walk with me please. 
And you want to,
walk, that is,
but this coffee has never tasted
so honest or blunt,
the way solitude can make a person
reassemble their skins and motives.
Against skeins of sepia-colored sand,
the tide thrashes soundlessly
as you did only days ago,
punctual and professorial,
gathering your ugly stitches in a pouch
you primly synched.
But no one’s here now,
or if they are,
they’re not watching. 
No one cares,
not even you for once,
so you shed yourself where you stand,
cross the dirt road barefoot,
walk through stalks that clutch your calves,
breezes that tease each hard-earned scar. 
You meet the shore halfway,
beaming and sure,
open for anything,
ready to go all the way.



Flotsam

You are busy
polishing Cabochons
that don’t need it,
busy rewriting the broken
music of sea shells
cracked underfoot. 
Skyward, gulls scream
for pity while the sun
shimmies behind cloth clouds
no different than a magician
making fortune disappear. 
The sand dunes buckle decisively,
their skin peeling free and sticking
to your soles like cake batter,
each grain a speck
of un-plucked infinity. 
On these very beaches,
which the waves have trampled for eons,
life stirs in the flotsam,
driftwood breastbones buried
at half-mast under each breached swell,
awaiting rescue and release
much like trapped breath or a muffled sigh.
Can you hear it? 
Did you even notice?



Tide Pool

This is how it’s done,
you floating like light
inside the cool swirl
of an aimless tide pool,
you a girl again,
giddy and reckless,
thirteen or thirty
it doesn’t matter,
your hair coiled from salt,
thoughts untangled for once,
feeling as weightless
as breath
as wishes
as secrets
sewn into the loose strips of wind.
You kick at nothing
because it’s easy
and fun
because you can
because why not,
the fish don’t care. 
In fact, they swing around now,
mere school kids themselves,
standing on fins,
rapt like voyeurs
before a stage play
when the field trip
is just beginning.
This is how you
crush summer
in your chest
ears
mind
mouth
like so-sweet fruit,
its colors jewel-bright
and radioactive,
shooting through your toes
like bolts of pleasure,
bouncing off underwater boulders,
pinging off the curled arms
of a wave that
holds you buoyant,
body to body,
a dance aquatic,
the two of you
whispering what only
the sea can hear.



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