The Coast Guard Station

At dawn, a few recruits have a smoke

on the patio above the breakers;

across the sand path, I sit with my books,

hearing their animal coughs.

Strangely, watching them tranquilizes me.

Their big clapboard house

is illuminated all night,

like the unconscious, though no one enters.

Even in hallucinatory fog,

their pier is flashbulb bright

and staunch as Abraham.

Overhead, a gull scavenges like a bare hand.

An officer, in orange overalls,

stares like a python

up into the window where I am.

What does it mean to be chosen?

To have your body grow into a hero’s

and have done nothing to achieve it?

To seize a birthright, unobstructed?

To dominate with confident bearing?

That is their covenant,

even cold-stupefied and lethargic:

hearing the blessing of Isaac to Jacob.

Naked and a little drunk,

I sit chafing at it,

the nerves in my teeth aching,

lording it over the rest of me.

Why do I appear to be what I am not?

To the world, arrogantly self-sufficient.

To myself, womanish, conflicted, subservient,

like Esau pleading, “Bless me also, Father!”

I hate what I am and I hate what I am not.