Part of my Feb 2024 Dream Poems project.
This one is a rewrite. It was originally written in Feb. 2020, edited in 2022, and now again, fairly extensively and with a slight title change, today.
Temporary
There’s really nothing better on any earth
than waking up in a rented condo, dream adrift,
across the slow street from the ocean, the southern wild ocean,
reacquainting with the misaligned burners of the cheap
electric stove, boiling water in a rocking pot for tea,
usually jasmine tea, many miles transported, and
instant grits from the nearby Publix, puttering and knowing
like a savoured secret that the whole day sprawls breezily,
nothing planned but everything that’s specific
and phenomenal waiting to be seen and surveyed.
The anticipation of that day expands like a pink
glow. The ritual checking of the tides, the weather,
the pull of the blood, this is what matters now.
Opening the newly familiar door, our door again
this week, inhaling the scent, absorbing the heat,
the seabreeze, the drenching rain,
taking its measure, whatever it is that lingers and cajoles,
and the rusty croaking of lustrous grackles,
already involved in the day under way.
Each morning, climbing onto ungeared rented bikes,
shambling, slow-pedalling, now and again
tearing off to any place, literally any place
within the ten square island miles,
whether it’s sidewalk or woods,
boardwalk bridge or sandy path,
the perfectly sized adventure.
Short cuts learned over years,
quick trips for postcards, shrimp, always more cheese,
most of the day scouting: the possibility of rummaging snakes
and gators, the overhead threat of orb weavers and
wishing you were the sort of person to wear a hat,
and you could be, it seems so believable.
A surprise of stinkhorns, beloved pines and oaks
ungreeted yet this year, gulf fritillaries and giant swallowtails,
side-skittering ghost crabs, a line of transiting pelicans,
all the particular unforgettables, indispensable,
indifferent and immersed in tribes their own;
the subtropical squandered lush of green tendrils and
boughs twisted, tangled, profusion of palm, fern, holly,
monstrous vines, and the grasses —
reddish muhly, quaking, panic, switch, plume —
these swaying, rustling, seductive blades that tickle
every sweet spot on our uncommonly easeful bodies
soaking in sun, rain, the tide’s own tempo.
Before I’m ready, and I’m never ready,
the idle days end,
condo and bikes are relinquished,
surrendered to those who come next,
while I move farther and farther north,
undetected by the moon though my eyes are awash
with the luminous brightness of shorebirds,
the gleaming curves of beach extending to sea,
storms and waves rolling in, dilatory shrimp boats bobbing;
and on my phone, all year long,
and now it’s grown to four long years,
one button to press for each day’s tides
on the absent island.
© M Wms 15 Feb 2020, ed. 6 Sept 2022; ed. 20 Feb. 2024
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