Kari Larson, Green Leaves

1. She walks away, the charming curve of her back to him While cloud shadow merges with the glare and salt Of the winter shore, with wet, grainy sand, And stealthily, the penumbra of perception emerges While he waits for her to turn, the green space between The words as yet unseasoned by time, a reflection, surely Of too many days spent in his sterile, undemanding cubicle And not enough on this beach. Years before, they were here, The sweet strawberry zest of life together still shone Between them. She ran ahead then too, little-girl-like, To chase the gulls into startled flight, to be the first to dip Her toes into the Pacific. Now she names him, “Philistine,” As she pulls her Puerto Rican pride about her, Shaking her donkey’s jawbone, anger warring with fear Obvious in every flash of her eyes, every taut sinew. There had been an ancient maple behind the rural school He attended as a child. Every spring the leaves, Starry explosions of green fascinated him. She Does that too, even now, when she leaves him, floundering With the driftwood, washed up by the iron-green of the sea.

2. Wish for moonlight, the sea is all there is. All waves go somewhere, yet break on the past A wash of strawberry roan sunrises Over tides of wet, waist-high winter grass. Between depths and shore, the fisherman stands Blithely flinging about his net of night While children chasing butterflies on strands Of sand and dust, ignore the coming white. Mundane mess of books, pots, an old wool coat, Water-splotched leaves of African violets, A place where someone (somewhere?) just awoke To the scent of coffee. Not many get How close we skirt the edge of the knife. Oh bliss, bliss missed, my one regret in life.

3. I stand on the beach of forever (Amen) with a song on my lips, my face, to the wind.