Sometimes I just sit
by the water on a hard
bench with a blank book
on my knee, the breeze
fluttering the empty pages.
I can rest my eyes
on the clouds, the waves,
large things and temporary.
The book on my knee
is small, my knee small,
the pages small, blank, and bright,
not to be denied.
Broken clouds, patches
of August brightness, cut grass
fragrantly drying.
Couples are slow to
call it a day, a summer,
pick themselves up, leave.
Lingering kisses.
Being alone, take yourself
with a pinch of salt.
“Only a face can lie” Jean-Luc Marion
The godsend of your
beautiful face can be hard
to take. I avoid
looking you in the
face—that is, your eyes, black pools
where others have drowned.
“Thou shalt not kill,” calls
your whole voluptuous self.
“Just try to love me.”
“…only flesh spiritualizes…”’—Jean-Luc Marion
Work-in-Progress
Occaisionally
cats cross my path, look away
back into the bush.
Sometimes they stare me
down. I like cats, but not when
they’re invisible,
saturated selves,
dependent on my rude gaze
giving them faces.
I’m not fair to cats—
no fault of their’s their faces
are faces I’ve loved.
I sit in moist grass
it’s softer than the day’s long
sails fewer now it’s late
enlarging the bay
but I’m drawing closer to
what it’s like to kiss
you, and be kissed by
you, as we quick come about
and open our eyes.
the old guy who sits
looking out over the Bay
counting syllables
as the sun goes down.
Would I recognize him? No.
Egrets croak desire
in the drying salt
grass. A dog walks by again
leading a young thing,
and I wave, losing
count. The world dovetails any-
way, we’re in the mix.
Why do my eyes dim
as I look at the evening
star shine in the haze?
Across the water,
that small prick of light to come,
shadow of desire.
I think of you now.
This old flesh is refreshed as
when you appeared this
morning on the bus.
You gazed from the window, you
did not hide your face.
There is this one thing
I come down here to be with
creak of gull, wash of
wave, my own silence
among them. Across the water
as it grows darker,
a name repeated,
it could be anybody’s,
though it’s not too late.
Dogs bark at nothing,
the edge of what we can’t know
shines above us all.
Only visible
from anywhere on this coast
blazes this one cloud
summer’s production
on view above crinkled blue
but only this once
time’s saturation
some Sunday painter‘s rough sketch
(in praise of nightfall)
Drawn to the water’s
edge, we watch the light changing,
the far regatta
taking one last turn
toward home. It’s the best part
of the summer day.
A few of us wait
for the first stars to show the
unimaginable.