Beachcombers (Return to Hidden Campsite)
In Imitation of Silvia Path
That above is the moon, a thin hint of territory.
How the cooling sand powders our blistered soles.
Oil spill-shaded tufts of dulse, dragged from the sea
on phosphoresent crests, hug the beach flat and ominous.
The waves have fingers, they gesture in their sleep.
A foamy snore cradles our breath.
It reverberates for miles, while the remote metropolitan glare
twitching and croaking, is a mere southern blemish.
The crests of the hills, worn by salt sea-spittle,
shiver like poisoned fleas, disorienting beachcombers.
Lacking significant moonlight, we gesture like amusement park androids.
We tramp the darkness become salt wet on our shoes,
Leaving no trail but a crisp crunch of sound.
We progress as though uncertainty were the surest thing of all.
The sea, which dreams us,
draws inward, sheets dragging.
2.
The sea lion's black, open eye reflects no starlight.
Why not? Rotted and smelly as its bloated belly is;
tiny kelp flies swarm its hirsuit flank
sprawled duck-awkward, brine-stained, and dry.
Jagged basalt fragments support him like a black dais.
Tenebrous seastems litter the beach,
ball and whip, an interrogator's instrument
with polished finish, used then scorned.
And now a grey wave protrudes its tongue,
delirious with all it has dreamed;
engines, echoes, lisps. Upon an anchored monolith
three gulls scold themselves.
The sea-wind conveys stray gashes of their clamour
across wide, rumbling breath, foam-swished.
Hear now how their shrill, sullen voices chant,
the seagulls' chant that perturbs the dreams of the sea,
dreams crashing beyond this astringent corridor,
and its dark solitude cloaking our groggy limbs,
and beyond that faint, somambulant city
with its storybook trollies,
its police cars, its wandering fog-glazed lights,
its lights, its traffic.
—1990