All the long, nonpareil days of August, I waited
Walking beaches incessantly
Combing the tides for word from you
Only sea-glass emerged
Not a word formed on foam.
My hems are mud-clumped threads
My boots caked in salt
The flumes of my bonnet blown backward,
Catching the joyriding wind.
Not a whole shell is extant,
Only bits & flakes, a bubble on a wave…
Still I walk.
My sisters look to horizons
Expect me to raise my eyes
But I am stuck in a story of you
Where a single, cool, green cylinder
Rolls to my feet.
I bend & slick off the water
I tremble, using my teeth on the cork
[A faint ‘pop!’]
The fainter smell of your ink
The mystery of your yes or no
Curled
like a hermit crab in wine-bottle shelter.
There is only one today;
Always only one me
So fraught with self & simpering love words
They seek me out front & back
They drip from me like raindrops down oilcloth
Run to edges that curl the streams
I wear a Papa Salt hat, yellow in this sunlit Other Day.
I don’t expect a Prince a-riding
I’d prob’ly fall in love with his horse & dash him from saddle,
Leaving him standing bandyleg-beached
As Horse & I gallop, splashing, into the sea.
Time To Rain
Mercury gone retro brings monsoons
But since that last hailstorm in June
Things are quiet.
I feel like a chess piece out of play
Cornered by a pike-poxed pawn
A Queen at bay to the dwarf
But dwarves are Earth & know the caves
What better ally to be sent me?
I throw the ball again to
See if I can hit the sea
It’s all downhill from here…
Dancing On My Daddy’s Shoes
Tho something I’ve never done, seems somehow dug into my memory
Like finding a bone among the feathers
A made-up story about a little girl I never was
Nor can be this life.
And so loved anyway
Still dancing.
When No Belief Was Left
We turned back
The trackless waste devoid of all save Hunger
Beckoned no more
In full retreat, we fled, thankfully
Fragmented among ourselves,
We slept in the ruins
The mild nights belied our inner chill
From all the ice & snarl, we breathed relief.
Alive again to home & hearth. We were
The heathens left alive
As ghosts, alone & insubstantial
To live among the resting of our lives
So
packed with promise just before the War.
