№ 3

By the Ocean we waited for some hint towards the novel.

All quiet quiet in the creamy June sun,
the gasping-choked laughter of tumultuous waves
punctured by a seagull’s cray.
Later, in the afternoon —

God, it’s after-noon.
Come to the village’s avenue,
We’ll go looking and you tell me which postcard you like best
and I’ll try to say what’s been hard these days.

I don’t know what I think, I don’t know what to say, to think
What can I say beyond the anticipated to convince —
to hide the hungriness that smears my sighs?
We’ll have to hit the post office, after the market.

But now, we drink mineral water
and stare and stare and stare.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I should be happy here
I think I was, once, treasuring seashells and laughing with sea lions.
I used to believe their silhouettes were mermaids.

And I know I smiled in the spring.
now all I can see is the bleach of the sun.
When I walk the shoreline I envy the dead and covet the foam.
It’s so white here so white

the pink walled Spanish hotel above the sea,
and its patrons creaking breaths and polo shirts,
the ash-people coo like pigeons
breathing in bone dust on a summer’s breeze.