Heard nothing
but it was waiting
patient as color
enduring the changes
in the light that made it.
A wall is like that,
even with its impatient door.

2.
So much to tell you.
Sleek haunches of the naiads
slipping through brightness,
yet you’d expect to hear
the slishing merriment
(if that’s not too fancy)
as they pass, water always
answers out loud
even the quietest gesture.

3.
Other things too I think
you ought to know
that I know about you,
we are not night
to each other
even though we do
have so many hands.

4.
Palm trees, royal,
on the esplanade
above the sea
in Santa Monica,
for example. I know
how urgent they were for you,
how many nights you stood
close as you could to one,
facing the tall houses,
pretending the sea was not there,
right there, behind you.
The little blasphemies of adolescence
trickled down your cheeks,
wanting the many and not the one.

5.
I know about such things.
We name our cities for them
and then forget. She brought
her son to the new God
who gave him all the rest.
That story. Always by the sea.
When you tried to turn
into our meager many-world
I felt myself at your side
trying to turn you back
to face the sea. My sea.
You won’t remember this
until it says so. Words
work that way. Your body
remembers for you.

6.
Still heard nothing.
Bird seed a-plenty on the lawn,
on the branch. Wait.
I’m used to waiting.
What else is time for?

7.
Let me be precise.
We stand in the forest
and think about the sea
out loud in words still green
or starting to turn gold.
Old. We are one thing
and want another.
                                         How dare
people lean to swim—
it amazes me still,
as if codfish came out
and shouted sermons on the sand.
But you know best,
some people have naiad in them
while I’m still trying to learn
how live in air. All this
is the mystery of breath.

8.
I think I’m starting to hear
something, a thin sound like a letter
slipping into the mailbox.
Slim sound. Sly sound.
Soft as the sky and now gone,
silence again.
When you get a chance
go to the museum, a big one,
and listen to the colors on the wall,
they call them paintings but so what,
they’re colors for us, and tell us
what they think we ought to know.
The way I know so much about you
and you know about me
though you don’t know you know.
Stand in the gallery
and read one color at a time
all around the walls,
una alla volta, don’t they say,
one thing at a time, one word
until the next color speaks.
Forget the images—an image
is just a sudden hand
on your shoulder, soft
finger on the nape of your neck.

9.
And that’s where all our travel brings us,
a place where we can make up
another person’s memories

and give them back, a place
where colors shimmer and swimmers
shiver as they come up for air,

a place where cities even
stretch out their arms to the sea,
houses are romantic by nature,

architecture is two-thirds sentiment,
we know so much about each other,
so I keep telling you more and more.

27 October 2020