Backshore
As for when the starlings lifted
over the jetties
and through the sheaves of vapor
shaking out from in between the cattails,
I know as much as you do.
Prudent as we were
we couldn’t bear to stay awake like that
in silence, naked silence
and then the ocean left her streaks of salt
between your legs, your lap,
as if you were finally abandoned,
folding and stretching in layers
like wetted glass.
You ask me who I am:
that tree by the mouth of the dock
growing inedible quinces,
inhabited by almost every single one of the starlings
that left the beach just then
like a nest in the spikes that vendors put out
atop their awnings,
while a couple of sensitive strays
returned to the backshore.
And then you ask me what I know
and if I had to say I'd say that prudence isn't kind to us,
like the owl statuette
up on the railing of the lighthouse
which in my opinion is as fine
as many idols.
Ring-eyed, almost battered bare of paint
and frozen in his preparation
for a deep bow,
he is incurring the barbed laughter of the ocean
just as we were beginning
to pay the price for all our good luck.