Harbors

for Joanne

We reach them as a cat reaches, rolled
as long as it can stretch and yawning.  We want
the air--by which we mean the resonance
of the slat and breeze and any mammal leaping
too far away to hear--want that great space
against our pores.  Windows?  Want them open.
Clothes:  off.  Do we think film lurks everywhere
we have skin?  Photograph that one, we say,
and that, that.  It's possible in a village
laughing with gulls to forget the way we walked
or pedaled and gasp toward a laugh of our own
that, as often as we turn, we'll never
account for the long choosing that's kept us.
Remember the old man selling pastry
and fudge, the one who'd climbed the steeple
and seen the destroyer erupt, the U-boat
surface?  He had that to tell, sprinting the sand
and street of oyster shell, and still had,
counting the coins and bills back to us.  One day
we'll riffle through our common purse for who
knows what to hand as change when someone asks.

(c)Jay Paul                    1999

from Going Home in Flood Time

The Ink Drop Press, Painter, VA