Seven days I stalked you
impatient for the indelicacies to begin.
You lounge at the hotel, suck taffy
and update your address book.
The sea at 1pm is saying
I am so quiet I am so good
forgive me why not my past.
Ducks fit themselves into the chemistries of the ponds.
Hair falls across my face like a fouled bandage.
You were raised in a cave by bats.
They dreamed of the glitter of the sea,
flew there and were drowned.
Oh sad bats, your diary should read.
Instead there’s a profligacy of numbers
conceiving appointments in the foam of connections.
Smitten mermen murmer and twitch
from their underwater bars.
Carnivor, your room number is eight.
Say something to me and drown out
the copycat baas of the gulls.
The gold chain around your neck
matches the gold pepper of the sand.
I compliment you like an addict.
Listen now. I have paid everyone off,
the lifeguard, the marshal and the ropemakers.
I have rented the broken down cigarette stall,
town hall in another century.
Religion itself has papered the house.
It is for the execution of you.
How glad! Now Nature can stop
her particulars, feminine and busy,
and yank up the sea so we might meet
in the perfect arena of upturned waves
and live deeply, tangled and mesmerized,
beneath the glass soles of the tourist boats.
copyright 1987 by Harry Kondoleon