wish you were here

I want to try to tell you
about how lucid the water
was that day, how purposeful
the sun, how the wind
snapped a linen sheet open-
mouthed as a sail over
the railing at the end of
the pier –                I wrote,

wish you were here

and meant it only
halfway through,

the line breaking off
and twisting at you,
my bare feet pointing
southward,
the soft and hard ocean
mewling so close I could
see the back of her
turquoise eye.

no one else can stand
in exactly the spot where
I’m standing, and
it’s taken three decades’ walking
to say I love you
to the inevitability of my solitude.

next to me

a man was coaxing his camera
into capturing this, like trying
to huddle fish together, their
silver bodies knives
slipping between his fingers.

we are always approximating –
see how the light changes just
before the shutter fires. I meant
to tell you          I want to say     that
this is as close
                            as we’re going to get:

I love.                 wish you.

a jellyfish is pulsing over
white sand six feet below my soles,
the photographer is angling to my right,
on my left a dark streak of coral,
and above my head a pelican, empty-
beaked, glints against a single cloud.

no one will ever be here again.
the line is scalloped and fleshy,
tastes of salt-rock. I suck it dry.

(driftwood)