Emerging switch-eyed from the undergrowth
into an evening that has just arrived but where there’s still
and mainly light, at least for now, withdrawing like receding rooms,
the trees losing distinction like the faces in a crowd that’s running
to or from an incident you haven’t yet heard news about,
or single voices drowned out in a vast simultaneity of voices,
we see a guy pass on a jet ski, and I wonder what
he’s thinking, if he’s happy, where he’s going, or whether
he’s forgiven himself, truly, for the thing he’s most ashamed.
Each thought feels like the answer to a question that
I’ve not been asked: the images of solar flares; religious
martyrs’ final words; the knowledge that you’re not where
you’re supposed to be; another world, a bit like this.
As if to say, Well, what did you expect?, shrugging off
each revelation like a soothsayer who knows he’s right,
the jet ski rider disappeared into the mists across the bay
from us. I felt an urge to drop my things and go, to follow
him and start a new life in the sun, hearing his voice say,
That’s what I did, Baby, and look what happened to me, the wake
waves of his jet ski gently lapping on the pebbled shore.