A Poem About The Ocean

The traditional response

would be a lament.

The image of a man standing on a block of ice

in the middle of the North Atlantic,

screaming

into the frozen Arctic wind. How

when she finally got home that night,

she seemed awkward.

Her cheeks were pink

and how her little rayon sundress shone translucent

around her thighs

in the light of the doorway.

"Turn some lights on," she said impatiently.

"Where have you been?"

And she would not look at me.

She had to ride with Brian because his wife

was in New York,

said they stopped at his hotel,

so he could get a sweater.

"You went to his room?" "Just for a minute."

"What's going on?" "Nothing."

But it was well past midnight

and when she went to take a shower,

I rifled through her stuff,

the little dress -- barely a handful,

the papers in her bag -- nothing

and then her black lace panties.

But this was not the first time

I felt small before her.

And this is not intended as the block of ice

but the image of a child

having only just discovered the ripples

of light in the bathtub,

standing on a beach, looking out at the vast curve

of the horizon.

For, the real story starts years before

on top of a hill,

wine and bread in the late summer clearing.

She lay naked against the hillside,

the valley spread out below us.

The sky moved in slow September clouds.

I fumbled with the button on my trousers,

leaving the socks on my feet.

She shivered as I kissed her neck

and down the shoulders.

I lay my head between her breasts,

could hear her heart, and in the space

between the beats, how small we are,

stretched out naked to the world,

and I

was supposed to drive myself into her, and I wondered

how it came to be, me and her,

here on this hill above the September valley,

but she was waiting, and this was the moment,

and I was the one.

I held myself bluntly between her legs

and everything was sinking

into the hillside.

She squinched and stiffened

eyes tucked together

and then open boldly as if to say

Get on with it!