An April Pairing of Two Poems

I. Cypress Tree

So it started with a record as evenings often do and a couple whiskeys

which were never gotten around to

and not a soul complained being too

preoccupied with the night and the eyes and the Virgin

Mary candle light.

And they found themselves disarmed the way a person tends to get

when they bump into a stranger and spend

days wishing they’d met and said hello,

and they resent and bully themselves embittered

only this time they said hello and so were at deep dark spring night peace.

They were bathing at Aigniers in a white bed

tossing and thrashing like a hammerhead

fins skimming the sand mutually predator

bilaterally prey

and mutually supplicants in the others’ inextinguishable hands.

How grand

to be young and free in an acquiescent way

like a cypress tree

bending with the will of the wind and letting it arch them as far as it pleases.

II. In Monterey

In Monterey a host of splashes

make up my day

In Monterey I have seen innumerable colors

of flow and ebb, sloshing and sucking

toward themselves

In Monterey I wear a blue dress, expose

My legs to each passerby; I don’t give a damn

I ache and yearn as cypress trees root and climb

forth deep in my sternum

I watch an otter roll and dive and am jealous,

awed and kelp-drunk

In Monterey I revel in the warmth of my mother and father

I revel in the blessing of my grandmother’s coral-pink rosary

I have worries and fears deepening my irises by fathoms

I have no salvation but time

I do what I can to evanesce into the various splashes

of Monterey