Page 101
On Coopers Beach
Pinch rose fruit
between damp fingertips. A Labrador bitch squats,
launches into wave. Off-season
sky deflates against skiff, bare pate.
Grey even more so, whales in eastern squalls
tangle of false heather.
The drab nativity of the hatched,
their ink-washed eggs. Clemency in cloud
if any. Sky of hard blue stone.
My father splits plum skin,
the soles of his feet on fire: I’d forgot thinning.
The sunken dogfish waltzes sharp sand fleas.
A smashed castle.
Aeneas carried his father out of Troy,
Anchises who would not fight death
slumped across his son’s broad back
wide-winged heat gliding down. Heart-burst birds.
What happened after, scorched eyes
the blackness enameled
with burning gold. We crab walk to the tarry lot
mouths full of ambrosial salt
settle in the honeysuckle shade—
a smear of yolk, carbuncled sand flea bites
this hooded sorrow without shape, a liminal trespass.