Poem-a-Day

We rented a small place by the sea.
For a few days, we could look out
across a widening expanse of blues. Nights
beside the water, more stars. You traced
Orion’s Belt against the dark.

I hoped to be free of seeking attention
from the external world, which always 
overwhelmed my art. Yet, in my work
there were times I could give myself 
over completely to matters of the heart. 
In the sand, I watched white-breasted gulls

return. You could spend lifetimes 
in the shadow of other people’s wants,
and you have done it many lifetimes over,
said the mystic, brushing my tears 
from the cards. In my work,

I was adept at constructing niche
dioramas of the heart, long hallways
for certain sorrows to brood in, and sudden 
windows facing westward to gaze upon joys,
until, one morning, I found my own joy
dead in the yard. After that,

I woke repeatedly into a persistent dark.
So you see, I often said, I have lived so long
with a vacant heart and what if our love
turns to sand? You take my hands

into your hands. Our small place: the sea
is illegible at night, except for its solemn 
crashing. To be drawn into oneself, then out
like the tide, is that love? Or is love

what shore remains? 
By the sea, everything seen
is seen lightly, shadows of wings 
passing over sand.