The map of the Cape flexes
its muscles.
Manomet bulges—biceps to P-town’s
curled fist. Inlets ripple
like arterial
highways. I am here alone,
in the off-season.
The hermit crabs and I have
found
a hundred vacancies—unheated—and
hope
to last the weekend without
crying. The wind’s
baritone is the only culture
left here; it gropes
for the grass’s high notes
in the rain.
I’ve strained to hear the
foghorn’s boyish tenor
but it’s gone, like the tourists’
noisy children.
Will they remember it, as
I have all these years—
the ocean’s rooster—or was
it just another
summer for them? Today I braved
the beach
to watch cold fishermen in
waders
casting off. What is it like
to watch
the water not for metaphors,
but fish?
I see the ocean’s muddy hemline
rising
like the tide of Paris fashions,
or wish
I were a boat in the crook
of Orleans’
arm. I hear of stranded pilot
whales
at First Encounter Beach and
think of love. . . .
So, who said poets should
be practical?
I hope this finds you well
when it arrives.
(First appeared in The Women’s Review of Books.
Copyright
© 1995 by Jennifer Rose. All rights reserved.)
