Thursday, July 21, 2022

Closed for the Season

Now the wind and the weather and the whether come down
down from the hills, down from the down. Lift me up on the rocking roses
all rock-roses, 

false supposes;

lift me up

and carry me out to see the sea. 


The bank has crumbled, the cliff’s edge edges

air where the sea steps used to be; a moon’s bite out of the asphalt shows

the etiquette of gods at tea 

isn’t what it used to be. 

Lift me up

and carry me out to see the sea.


This year a dead zone out at sea: bronze fields like hammered shields

and each dint pried by the sea-sun yields

algae red as spattered blood

algae read as battered mud.

Lift me up

and carry me out to see the sea.


There was a restaurant in a little house, with surfboards dangling up above:

chowder and beer and cheese on toast, a waitress bronzed as this year’s sea

from years of summer waitressing,

years of wading in the surf,

years of surfing in the rain;

she used to admire 

the doting lovers we used to be.


Old now, we stop. The windows are boarded over;

the clay toppled down to the golden sea,

the steps fallen down all the way to the beach,

the roses tumbled out of reach.

Closed for the season. Leave off asking

Reasons for this or that or each

And carry me out to see the sea.


4 comments:

Dale said...

I roll several different beach-trip disappointments into one which has actually nothing to do with present reality, except that of course it has everything to do with present reality. There was once a little restaurant that was unexpectedly closed; there was once a set of steps that fell down onto the beach; there was once a dead zone and/or red tide that turned the sea a weird dirty gold color. But not all at the same time. And though we went there every year for... thirty? forty? years, we haven't been there since the before times. So don't believe everything a poet says.

Pascale Parinda said...

This should be set to music. I love it.

Anonymous said...

I agree
The rhythm

Dale said...

Thanks! Inventing melody is an art that's beyond me, I'm afraid. I have no idea how people do it.