The unmanageables of today, like green-gold fish.
The old man ebbs with the tide and counts the day’s lack
as a mud impression of his wife’s thin face. The fisherman
is Dictys, caught in myth. All he has is blonde sand
like crushed rice, crushed between his toes, and the east
wind a tic along the shore. A bronze chest with seaweed
is half-buried because it is sea-junk. He kicks the chest, and
sees the frocked bodies of a mother and son — one buffers
the other. His wife had been barren. The old man leans
forward, unthinking a story,
and a whisper,
The night, this darkness visible,
a copse of waves so near to your soft curls,
the shrill voice of the wind, bloodless, unheeded,
nested in your red cloak, fair little face.