Gone & Gone

Two Coasts, The Sea Beside

21 Two Coasts, The Sea Beside What he told her & why. Standing hard scrubbed on the verge of free. Clean as a baby’s bum: a seed: a whistle. Down frothing the air, reprieve’s milky shake. • Scree tumbled near cliffs decorated with fish. Birds scavenge the fabulous bits. Dunned by water & wind, patiently giving away what can’t be redeemed. The release of beating waves with your fists. • Whoever stands beside the ocean can be applauded for standing at all. Taking on earth’s debt, boulders spewed like dice in the horrific music of creation. 22 • Two forgotten bodies cleave sand & shiver, in deep, once rocking, putting back that part of the ocean they don’t need. • He looks for light from the leaning tent; the Atlantic hauls itself up & hurls its curse against that huddled shore. Cards & brandy brandished as totems. • If it was her birthday still. If the shore didn’t crave its own niche in affection. If time couldn’t harbor regret. On her side, the pockmarked faces of rocks, the mooned tide pools of the Pacific. Anemones close in on themselves, 23 clusters clinging to rock as if to grace, swarming like sheep they shrieked about, back then. • She walks out to smell the sea or rain, pretends it’s something in between, bits of salt & a wind that won’t quit. There, where sea gorse grow. • He hopes to resurrect himself the way low tide transforms this island to a peninsula, sweet light veering off to dusk. • Waves gone deaf against a garrulous shore. ...