Journey

The wind over open water: sharp howling.

Guitar strings breaking.

Solstice having passed days longer now.

Beach aria.

Synaptic dysfunction or syntactic exuberance.

A small figure on the deck looking out across the blue-black.

The years since then drunk and unforgiving.

Wild roses crawl through the rough plank balcony.

Drinking bitter coffee on the terrace.

Weeks after that, alone in the vast public square.

Watching the crowds board the night boat back to the mainland.

Years later another journey you won’t take.

Where will you now journey.

For a day.

Sounds of water.

You will sometime soon say: I am coming home now.

And not mean it.

What in your life have you meant.

A little inn perched in the hills above Calvi.

The cloud-sheathed cold.

Cold falling into the steep streets of the city.

You are still there.

Tissue-clouded moon swells above the blue-black.

A terse, obscene, spattering of stars.

A blue stone, fastened with a leather strap, cold against your chest.

Closing your eyes at the beach, listening to the rocks being piled, softly clacking against one another.

Another music for you.

Will you fall?

The wind presses against the portholes.

They rattle slightly in the night.

Rolling sound of rain pouring into the sea.

Wreaking the sound against sleep.

Waking with the light, the drunken year sinking.