Cry of the Stars

Late June, and by my apartment porch
the scent of flowered vines sends me back
eleven years, reeling, to a riot of mowed grass
and sunshine on skin:

I’m running through shifting shadows
with you again, while your mother
cuts tomatoes in the kitchen
and the white duck wanders the backyard.

Pale pollen on fingers, clear nectar
lingering on tongue-tips, we ran, breathless
and blurry—

Somewhere beyond the clotheslines I lost you:
dark curls disappeared into billowing white,
eclipsed by heat and wind.

Did I lie down and close my eyes
in the center of that bright and whirling world?

Have I slept for eleven years, or is it now
I am dreaming?

I think of your face behind fluttering sheets,
your mother’s voice at the patio door—

I turn; the wind drifts; I breathe
again, unlocked.

A forest of umbrellas, cheerfully garish,
springs up with the receding tide like mushrooms
after a thunderstorm;
meanwhile the flock
of browning bodies sprawls sun-seared,
sleepy, over the giant mirror of the sand;
a kite wearing a sharkskin swims fluttering
through the clouds and scowls
with all his teeth.
One family with three little girls keeps
disappearing under the waves—
the lifeguard shrills angry warnings,
windmills his arm into a one-way sign
back to shore, back to shore.
The wind comes tumbling off the ocean
and snags itself in my hair and
this is almost perfect:
your laughter muffled with a cracked
conch shell, our hands wrist deep
in sea-wells and sandcastles, the burn
of happiness and salt water
singing in my throat.

I.
There: the murmuring music of blackflies
in my ears, the haunting hum of crystal wings
hovering so near! One magnificent creature
lands gently as a fat mosquito,
washes his face with dignity, and bites.

(Slap-smack. Oh gosh, ew, oh—)