top of page

Pirate's Cove




There's a trail that is more of a

collapsed staircase: a cavernous

fold in the hill’s hip-side

 that you can take if your knees are

fine.


and even if they are not, the desire to

show a boy-- your adventurous side

could be enough


to catapult down crevice and

slide your dog across slippery stream

to coax both animals

over the parts where

there really is no good way


When you reach the sand,

the boy, tall and coffee skinned

finds a rock to sit on and goes quiet

makes you feel guilty for

thinking you were not alone


you sit on your own trying not to

stare at him

Having to remind yourself, that

the sea is what you've come for.


Your dog digs a little patch in the sand

but so littered in rocks is the shrinking shore,

that he huffs and looks at you like

no


the boy is still looking at the horizon

His brown eyes are hands,

holding onto something out there

a railing of beauty


You know you are everything that could loosen

a man's grip

the sweat, the wind, the woman-ness of you


you feel something touch your side.

But when you check it is

your own hip-fat

touching your rib fat

and the line between them, of separation

really one of

closeness.


Before you head back, the boy

crouch down next to your dog, who has found someplace to lay

His bright white fur against the

black sand; his dampened paws

like four wet birds


The boy's hands articulate over your dog’s scruff

kneading his shoulders and neck

You move your hands to meet his

on the animal between you and

for the moment, your four paws together look like

bodies walking a white sand


Back at the lot, his hug goodbye is like a seagull, pecking

at something he being

held hostage by

a woman


For the next two mornings, you wake up

strapped to the mattress

and

scrape from the bowl of memory

every last morself

like you will your

buckwheat cereal

as if you are not your own feeder

as if you are not

your own master


A blue heron flies up to your

window to say something about aloneness

but you are only thinking of what it will be like

when he kisses you

but it is even hard to imagine

at the end of every scenario you conjure

your face and his face are like

the wrong ends of two magnets

they cannot will not do it


When she was small, four or five, your mother

used to take a piece of white bread,

given by her mother,

to a remote corner of the

house


and there she would crouch,

ball up the slice in her small hands, tight

and even tighter-- a small moon,

and for as long as she could make it last,

she would take small

--even smaller than that--

bites


making it last, pretending that

everything that could be given her

already had.


댓글


bottom of page