words & pictures
Put salt in a jar
That convalescent blue
Shook it until
The sun-flecked afternoon
Groaned seashell promises
Lazily rolling
The lap of drowning dreams
There is always a fat man at the beach
In the background, walking against
The shore like some chagrined duck
Or penguin, skinned raw, useless wings, hands like cranes
Making round desultory pecks
As if
Beyond all proprietal regrets
Still tentatively swimming
There are birds inside the calliope I said, when we ran away To see if the sea Breaks like glasshouses Throwing stones With that sideways trebuchet Skipped, skipped, subsumed You bent, bird-quizzically In your throat That inchoate swallowing Of disbelief I said; look there Above the rising Brass of morning Pipes rayed like the sun If you turn, just one step away Let go my hand The stone still falling See them fly
