Wednesday, June 30, 2010

a whole lifetime for

Sometimes, when the nautical theme we'd set up for a party would actually turn to water, we'd wish for a beach to comb with metal tines.

This is the power we have, hitching the cuffs of our jeans to the protrusion of our knees. Then everything would quicken and we'd sink down.

"There are devils down here," he'd say.

"No, only light."

"Or darkness."

"More sand."

I'd take the comb, slick back my hair. Brush the sand from my lips with my forefinger.

We'd get bored, imagine a schooner. Two schooners. The boat and the glass for beer. We'd sit on the schooner and sip from schooners. Watch the sun go down, then come up. Like flipping between focuses at
the eye doctor. The sea rocking us sick.

He'd take a heavy-lined fishing rod, cast it out, reel in something from deep down. A sucker of some sort. Fine, fine, we'd say, sharpen our knives.

We'd cut into that sucker and it’d open wide. A new place, where glares of sun attach themselves to the midriffs of deciduous trees, stab out at us. Wonderful, threatening.

It’s now and the pier we're sitting on is handmade. Rickety. We can see the opposite shoreline clearly. Could swim there, no questions asked.

The water is echoing light. There are no wrinkles in it.

It is quiet. I mean to say absolutely still.

Pine, you can smell it in the air, rich as something you’d save a whole lifetime for.

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