Five Poems

Circle of Salt – October 28

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If you are my bright protector. If water can ever meet wood. If a coastal forest. If I lived there. If I made a trail of salt to follow. If it did not dead-end. If the windows of your house opened on a bay. If its legs did not gain ground so quickly. If I knew the words to make it stop and face me. If there were words. If I did not find, after a long line of years, that the salt was my own, that it streamed behind me as though burst from a sack. If trails did not loop back to their beginnings. If lines could be broken. If the woods were full of words. If I sat another day in the wind on my rotten balcony, watching the lines of breakers chase the waves away. If I sat another day. If I sat another day.

Circle of Salt – November 11

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If the gray bone of the beach did not tease the sea. If salt did not form crystals. If a body was not made of water. If it had not left behind traces of itself, a white web through the house. If a storm. If a staircase. If plants could twist their feet between the cracks in my sidewalk. If the wave had not salted the earth. If water contained only itself. If it left a dead line behind. If I could not be planted. If my feet crumbled into the waves and left for distant lands. If solution. If I dissolved and evaporated, crusted a green leaf in the canopy. If in transit. If I spied from my nest a pair of dancing feet. If I captured them and boiled them down to suck out their marrow. If sweat were evidence of skin. If moisture. If solution.

Circle of Salt – November 25

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If I sat a spell. If I could remove my feet from their casings. If I could strip them down, saplings. If a forest grew of my body. If I let my feet loose, wound them up and set them going in a cheerful circle. If uprooted. If a house could be uprooted. If cement did not clog the foundations. If I had not, in my anger, set cement throughout the house, made it heavy, a paperweight. If tractable. If tenable. If a tent city. If the water table rose and this paper house drifted away. If a tent flap. If a house flapped. If a house with feet and a beaked nose walked past. If a house could wander. If I could ever leave the rooms of my youth, could ever find new feet for walking. If I could rend myself. If I could rent myself. If intruder. If in truth, I was telling a lie. If I lay there. If my body could lay down its bones anywhere else. If, once the corner stones had been laid, once my sunburned skin had shed into the chinks of the sea wall, once salt had reeked its way under my nails. If sand did not harden like cement around my buried feet.

To the Woman in the Woods – December 20

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This is the science of beaches: that they are between the land and the sea. That out on the water you may sink, and lying on the beach you may sink into the sand. That a hole, as it is dug, will fill. The beach extends under the water, holds the water up, and becomes the tongue of the ocean floor. Spreads under the sidewalk in front of my house and creeps up the steps to sleep in my bed. You may live on top of or under the sand, where there is always more space to bury. There you may build a city. Or there you may lose a city. There you may find curtains of seaweed, or houses on stilts. They do not balance, do not walk. The smooth bones of empty houses wash up there and wash away, and you may crush them beneath your feet, and they will become part of the surface you walk on.

To the Woman in the Woods – January 2

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I dreamed that I woke up and found you standing on the beach. A storm was coming in purple and you watched it. Your back to me, your matted hair stuffed with sand. Then I knew it was a dream. You were caked in it, as though buried and unburied. As though an animal, rolled in some strange smell. I said, I am where. You said the liminal. You drew a line in the sand, and four lines branching out a claw. You marked the spot. Behind us the houses and before us the sea, and between us the sand. The bones. The footprints into the water I had not yet made. I asked you to turn around and you did, your face empty as a keyhole, toothed and missing.