Threshold

From the bar at the pier’s end

they saw the moon’s pale hands

splay across the sea as if it were a piano,

phrasing waves into a nocturne.

He held his beer glass

steady on the high counter,

as a breeze blew, and her shawl tassels

fluttered against her mouth.

She’d got a raise, she told him.

He was glad, he said.

She watched the night fisherman

step into the shallows, cast his line.

City lights caught

the crescent of the bay,

completing the regretful curve

of ships leaving harbour.

Along the beach

small ordinary fires

warmed the dark.

Free

I lay full-bodied on the beach

and watched my son front the waves.

Cool sky restrained

the sun, a hoop of yellow.

I saw him run, a sandpiper, past

the bathing area, hammocked

by two lifeguard’s poles, towards

fiercer waters, cross-hatched.

Calling him back, my arm stretched

out into a line of warning

I became my father,

Daedalus, afraid for Icarus.

Still, the wild sea mirrored

a naked boy in me, flying.

Frieze

I swim to see sun settling, clear as feeling,
a snake skin helix on the pool floor.

The apartness of light
animates its pattern.

From under my curving arm
a skylight reveals a dream of water, blue.

If I reached down, there would be nothing to take
but the vision satisfies like sleep, or movement.