RAVI SHANKAR
Wide, woven, the brim of a straw hat shades
Her eyes as she leans against a stack of crates,
The dock buzzing with arrival and departure.
She holds in one hand a bouquet of nosegays,
Straightens the other arm as if to feed a gull.
The speck of his ship has long since vanished
And now sunlight glances off a barge’s prow,
Reveals again a shopworn tale. Deeply, she inhales.
Everything is predestined in retrospect.
A fisherman lugs a tub of ice onto a lanyard deck.
The wind stirs an abandoned hank of rope,
Lifts her linen dress until it reveals red kneecaps.
What was the last thing he murmured to her?
She remembers nothing save the way
His chin, unshaven, felt against her tongue.
A clomp of boots breaks her uneven respiration.
Momentarily, she’ll fling the bouquet into seas
The color of gray she has never before seen.