I. The Photo
In the cunning light of autumn a figure
contemplates a tidepool’s civilization of urchins
starfish, sea lettuces
the grotto’s crustacean shell a pretext for discovery
and certainly, strange things appear
sane here, reflections of skin, hair, and lips multiplied
in the vertiginous verdigris of waves
washing away intention
washing away associations.
She stands, diminutive in her child’s shoes,
this woman not-quite twenty-four,
pausing over the chasms, the waves,
the steely white light of coastal Maine telling no lies,
softening the penumbras that mask sea shapes.
II. The Dream
Together I go with you
into the black grotto
where time fell asleep in the groovelets
and the shallows
into the black grotto
carved from the shell of a
boisterous barnacle and feeling like it too.
Together we uncover all things nautical
The violence overgrown
thick in sea moss, algae you say
The penumbra looming deep as years.
Our friends the limpets, the seahorse,
The fiddler crab, these sea queens lacking
Teeth and voices, as we once did
In darkened bedrooms.
In darkness, whose shadow is a twin,
You and I continually entering the grotto,
This mysteriously spotted oceania,
raiding the hollows of memory winedark.
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