All afternoon the town readied for storm,
men in the harbor shallows hauling in small boats
that rise and fall on the tide. Pleasure,
one by our house is called. I didn’t think
the single man who tugged her in could manage
alone, though he pushed her up high enough,
he must have hoped, to miss the evening’s
predicted weather: a huge freight of rain
tumbling up the coast. There’s another storm
in town, too, a veritable cyclone
of gowns and wigs: men in dresses here for a week
of living the dream of crossing over.
All afternoon they braved the avenue
fronting the harbor, hats set against the wind,
veils seedpearled with the first rain,
accessoried to the nines. The wardrobes
in their rented rooms must glitter,
opened at twilight when they dress
for the evening, sequin shimmer
leaping out of the darkness…Their secret’s
visible here, public, as so many are,
and in that raw weather I loved
the flash of red excess, the cocktail dress
and fur hat, the sheer pleasure
of stockings and gloves.
I’m writing to tell you this:
what was left of the hurricane arrived by ten.
All night I heard, under the steep-pitched shallows
of our sleep, the shoulders of the sea flashing,
loaded, silvering with so much broken cargo:
shell and rusted metal, crabclaw and spine,
kelp and feathers and the horseshoe carapace,
and threading through it all the foghorns’
double harmony of warning, one note layered
just over and just after the other. Safety,
they said, or shelter, two inexact syllables
repeated precisely all night, glinting
through my dream the way the estuaries
shone before sunup, endless
invitation and promise, till dawn
beat the whole harbor to pewter.
Pleasure was unmoved and burnished a cobalt
the exact shade of a mussel’s hinge,
and every metal shone in the sea: platinum,
sterling, tarnished chrome.
The law of the tide is accumulation, More,
and our days here are layered detail,
the shore’s grand mosaic of detritus:
tumbled beach glass, endless bits
of broken china, as if whole nineteenth-century kitchens
went down in the harbor and lie scattered
at our feet, the tesserae of Byzantium.
Those syllables sounded all night,
their meaning neither completed nor exhausted.
What was it I meant to tell you?
All I meant to do this storm-rinsed morning,
which has gone brilliant and uncomplicated
as silk, that same watery sheen?
How the shore’s a huge armoire
full of gowns, all its drawers packed
and gleaming? Something about pleasure
and excess: thousands of foamy veils,
a tidal wrack of emerald, glamor
of froth-decked, dashed pearl bits.
A million earrings rinsed in the dawn.
I wish you were here.