Grass Island, and; Brighton Beach

Grass Island

December, it's cold, but the visitorskeep their spirits, looking for a souvenirlike pilgrims searching for a new life,though it's just key chains,magnets, hats.

In food stalls, shrimps shed greyfor gold, a transformationthat also shrinks them.Cuttlefish lose their antennas,crabs get to keep their claws,strung up like someonewith too many doctrines.

In a restaurant, city workers on holidayconverse about workplaces,the injustice they suffer,the revenge they would like to take.Hard to tell if they've just arrivedor are waiting for the next ferry.The maître d', having heard it all, brings outthe dishes, serenely as a sextonwho's just rung the day's last bells.

But we know the island is no cathedral,there are no flying buttressesor a soaring choir stunning usto believe, if for an instant, we arethe rightful heirs, our prayers true.

All that remain arethe salt in the air,lulling waves,and a fisherman in a stained shirt,counting up what the year is worth.

Brighton Beach

Gulls loiter above, a few waddleon the sand looking for food.

But the summer crowds,with their tanning oilsand sandcastles, are gone.

The air is at last free of stale beer,airwaves no longer rockedby music from box radios.

Even the sea returns to a solemn blueas if poised to receive kings and pilgrims.

At Café Tatyana, Russian retireesare having lunch—borscht and grilled fish.They eat without hurry, the memoryof breadlines at a safe distance.

Sometimes a man looks upas if perturbed. He glances towardthe horizon, past a strip of cloud-lit land,past New Jersey, the Atlantic,the Bosphorus, the Black Sea

where his youth is,where the sea is gold at dawnas he leaps into the waves and swims.