Poem

Monomoy Point

1.

Standing on the point
the dry fragrance of salty summer
beach grass draws me
to its weathered paper-edged sheaths
the way the build and break
of the waves bellowing reveals:
the whip of wind, the murmur
of a motor boat, the scrunch
of red sand underfoot, the hum
of dozens of dragonflies –
a barrage of the invited
and uninvited.

2.

In a boat anchored along the point
the doldrums of openness
and loneness are measured
in intervals of silence – minutes,
hours, whole days – a sobering
stillness except for the constant roll
and clap of the ocean against
the boat and the evolving shapes
of passing clouds: a building, cars,
a baby carriage. And marked by
intervals of movement – the bob
of a deer’s head beyond the lift
of a dune or the frenzy of a dense school
of bluefish boiling the surface
in a savage feeding – that feeds me
with what survives
and the permanence of a companion
at arm’s length: silence.