Gloucester Revisited

We perch on the rocks,
Our feet gentle sparrow claws curled
around the grooves,
In the summer that will not die:
Slanting spear-light on water
Small smooth stones skipping out to sea
As our feet across the stony gaps.
Joyful, free, until in the shade:

A goose, long neck wrapped around its body
At rest, swarmed with flies
Suffering that does not suffer.

Your stones skipping so far
Nimble, precise, 
Past the edge of vision into the sun.
Then, the glistening black otter
Stretched out beneath my feet
Shining, swimming towards a shore
It never knew it reached.

These prophecies of decay, their signs
and symbols, must all come true:
This world will never come again.

Migratory, I return there
to the summer that would not die,
the warm rocks that hold back the sea
and frame the sky's chandelier -
What nature foretold, is realized.
The sun slants over the water
as the evenings grow short
in a rush of wind, the
hushed breath telling me tales,
Winter without your warmth
As the sun slips deeply
and those still-smooth stones grow cool beneath me:
In darkness, loss.

Not long away, perhaps on a day like this
of strange brightness,
I will cede you to the West, while
The tide rises forever and
Joy's long struggle
Washes over all that was a
Warm birdsong of hope,
Freedom of solid ground, and
The patience of a twisted tree.

Fragment

The constancy of regret,
my truest friend
you have the power to keep
the past ever alive,
dancing before me

the warm, sorrowful longing
wells up when i revisit
that youthful faith
or curl up against
the black jersey bedsheets

The Final Vision

They were escorting him to his execution. His sentence: death by firing squad. As they led him along the narrow path overlooking the sea, I was with them, following at a distance of only a few paces. We were winding up a rocky, mountainous coastline somewhere in the tropics of the Pacific. The path was ill-kept, strewn with large, loose stones, though not terrifyingly narrow. A few hundred feet ahead, it curved upward and to the left, out of sight. To the right and ahead, the sea was rolling, treacherously below us, and growing placid toward the edges of vision. The man was asking about his wife, who had also been led around the side of this mountain, to be released. He wanted to know if she would be safe and cared for after his death. His two captors paused, and one spoke.

"We led her along this very path toward the town. She walked very slowly and gracefully, stepping sweetly over the rocks as if afraid to damage them. Then, by that bend just ahead, she stopped, and gazed lovingly out over the water. She was smiling, and the wind in her dress revealed the gentle curves of her body. I told her, "You are beautiful."

- The captive's eyes grew bright with memory. -

"She inhaled slightly, and as her breast rose, I pushed her as hard as I could."

As he finished saying this, he puts his hands on the man's shoulders and shoved.

At that moment, I was suddenly hundreds of feet away, watching from atop a cliff across the rushing strait.

The man emitted a loud "EEEYEH!!" as his body tipped downward and began its rapid descent. I was inside his mind, and saw his wife as she fell, and the words "You are beautiful" hung heavily in the salty air.

From across the water, he looked so small. His voice continued to echo, bouncing between the cliffs, long after his body had come to rest on the rocks below. The rough waves washed him clean.

A few minutes later, a man appeared with a shovel, to clear away the pieces. First the head, and then the limp body and limbs were fed into the water.

I stared across the straight, searching the path for the two executioners. I found them far to my left, heading back down the mountain in the direction from which we had come.

Tragedy

A baby squirrel sat trembling, crouched on the edge of the curb in the shade of an SUV. It flicked its tail and sniffed the air, the tiny nose quivering as it sensed the overpowering world. A gust of wind almost knocked into the street, and yet it held its ground. Fearless of my approach, he looked innocently into my camera.

What more should I have done to preserve him?

An hour passed, and he lay spread on the asphalt. Red and gray, and still so tiny. The black eyes were dull, but the wind brushed through the hair of his tail, as if trying to tell him:

Get up, get up. We will go back to the curb, and you will not be in the camera but in her hands, and she will cradle you and carry you to the nook in the tree where you were born, and life will stretch out the long day before you.

But the wind could not revive him, and the tiny faceless squirrel offered no reproach.