The Volcano
 
In this town above the coast of Italy, it could be 
any century in the last dozen. 
And since the sea has no landmarks, and the moon
rises in silence over the hills each night 
when a little weed shivers in the ancient wall 
across from my balcony — something eternal is left 
in these stone quiet mornings I belong to 
as much as the tiny blue fish that gather at my ankles                                     
or the half-sung prayers I hear at dusk.
                                                                                                        
Yet, all these tall days collapse as by a ship I round
the curve of a volcanic mountain at twilight.
There, towering above a darkening sea
while my knuckles whiten on the handrail — an eye 
where there should be no eye. Its red and slow blink 
sees me in its half-sleep, and I am a gnat whirled 
across ageless oceans — ecstatic to be seen
by this black giant burning with creation.      
            
Weeks later, home in New York City I describe                                         
to two friends in a restaurant my return that night 
with its seagoing clouds bright above mountain 
and night ocean, as big as low-lit planets —
their chiaroscuro blanketing the Mediterranean for miles.
When I speak, I do not understand I am saying goodbye                                       
to something vital — a lump forms in my throat. 
Both friends look away. My tears loud enough to be 
heard hitting the laminated menu. How impossible 
to be seized by that kind of terror and beauty again.

 

On my Morning Subway Commute, I think of Ensenada, Mexico 
 
Under a glowing green and white striped umbrella, a tall
wooden table stands with lemons and limes cut in half,
homemade hot sauce in a clay bowl, and a large cluster
of oysters covered in barnacles, roseate banded limpets,
and dried green sea hair- all of it fossil-like and ancient looking.
                                    
I join three men. The owner of the stand between their jokes
and stories tells me, “These three are the greatest wooden
shipwrights in the country.” They nod. With nowhere we need
to be, and nothing we need to do — all of us give over to the bright
morning: a seagull’s call — a rusted echo, the fishing boat
sounding its old school-bus horn as it leaves the harbor.
We look up at the sky after we eat an oyster to savor the taste.
Though, they flip the empty shells to inspect the insides which
they must have done hundreds of times to watch the sky rinse
the iridescence of an ocean sun shower in the pearly finish. 

The subway brakes screech. I lurch sideways. The engines shut
off, the air-conditioning exhales one last breath into silence.
For a long time, I do not know who I am,
or where I am going, until the clink of shell against shell becomes
the slow tick of cooling metal.

 

Someone Searches for How the Story’s Ending Arrived

​

Summer afternoon. The house so still.
Red crab legs hang over a pot
abandoned at the table.
One on top, with claws raised
looks to the ceiling for rain.
Mother, sister, and brother have gone
swimming. An osprey flies in a straight line
too quickly for hunting fish.
How plentiful the flounder seem
the father and children fish for
with string wound around the crook
of their fingers to feel first their breath
pulse on the line before the pull.
The lap of small waves along the boat again.
Wind cuts through the warm iodine air
carrying the earthy fume of oak, and it is fall
sending notice when sister and brother
will enter the long drift of hours
where a bell rang and became years.
On the porch outside, pages of a book left out
turn faster, slow in reverse, then fast again
as if someone searches for
how the story’s ending arrived.