The Shore

So the tide forgets, as morning Grows too far delivered, as the bowls Of rock and wood run dry. What is left seems pearled and lit, As those cases Of the museum stood lit With milk jade, rows of opaque vases Streaked with orange and yellow smoke. You found a lavender boat, a single Figure poling upstream, baskets Of pale fish wedged between his legs. Today, the debris of winter Stands stacked against the walls, The coils of kelp lie scattered Across the floor. The oil fire Smokes. You turn down the lantern Hung on its nail. Outside, The boats aligned like sentinels. Here beside the blue depot, walking The pier, you can see the way The shore Approximates the dream, how distances Repeat their deaths Above these tables and panes of water— As climbing the hills above The harbor, up to the lupine drifting Among the lichen-masked pines, The night is pocked with lamps lit On every boat offshore, Galleries of floating stars. Below, On its narrow tracks shelved Into the cliff’s face, The train begins its slide down To the warehouses by the harbor. Loaded With diesel, coal, paychecks, whiskey, Bedsheets, slabs of ice—for the fish, For the men. You lean on my arm, As once I watched you lean at the window; The bookstalls below stretched a mile To the quay, the afternoon crowd Picking over the novels and histories. You walked out as you walked out last Night, onto the stone porch. Dusk Reddened the walls, the winds sliced Off the reefs. The vines of the gourds Shook on their lattice. You talked About that night you stood Behind the black pane of the French Window, watching my father read some long Passage Of a famous voyager’s book. You hated That voice filling the room, Its light. So tonight we make a soft Parenthesis upon the sand’s black bed. In that dream we share, there is One shore, where we look out upon nothing And the sea our whole lives; Until turning from those waves, we find One shore, where we look out upon nothing And the earth our whole lives. Where what is left between shore and sky Is traced in the vague wake of (The stars, the sandpipers whistling) What we forgive.If you wake soon, wake me.