Summer Song 3
for M.

There is nothing here
you cannot touch:  the bright blue bowl,
the howling dog, the procession of linnets

partitioning the wind,
the leafy bounty untreed
or flapping limb

relentless against the kitchen
window—no, it is all available
here if you can put down

the fork and silence the tongue
long enough to peer
into the wide, charged, furious

air.  There, past the Cyclone
fence, through the gorgeous
chain-links that keep the bones

and rabbits in place, beyond
the rope-skipping children,
the empty rooms and goldfish ponds

now evacuated, past the pant
and gasp, the rubble of an old encampment
overgreen and abundant,

beneath the belly of the garter
snake, the sun-tanned toad
and the rocks laid out

to spell your name in this field—
it’s all available—the world—
this world you tried to hate and failed.

South Jetty Ledger

We’ve wagered the whole of our day
on the loose stones of the jetty,
for wind pushing up,
for the yellow

-foamed sea
and these imperfect halves: shattered
mussels—discarded by amateur gulls—
for a walk on the edge
of what we perceive.

We share
a field of vision:  tracks of sand
-pipers fanned out like a giant palm
across
the coast-

line, the clumped-
up seagrass, almost high
against the lowly ropes of kelp, and off
even lovelier, past the ken
of the fog-horn,

the bobbing head
of a sea lion tossed like a greyblack
buoy against our sight.  And yes, we hope
to find
the shortest path,

the flattest series
of stones leading back to the sand, 
that your old Subaru will make it
home—quiet—
and what we think

we’ve found
will balance the account:  a broken shell 
in your pocket, the day
devoured, this solitude
which persists. 

ForPoetry