PELIGROSO


written in Minneapolis, October 6


At Ludington we'd been walking
the pier just like always, the sun

fresh and full on our faces, the wind
gusting up the waves in heaving

sprays, and so we ventured into
the deep, dancing between billows

of green, then blue, then oil-slick black.
The swells sucked and swallowed the rocks,

then flooded the air with rain and
mist, cold foam, delicious agony!

We knelt behind the salacious
lighthouse where the wind sullied our

souls and small boats dallied and dipped
indecently. We hid there in

our lee cove and necked til our bones
chilled in the summer sun, ridiculous,

and headed back for avacados
and gouda cheese, back through the

swells and the gusts and the heaving
waves and all the vertiginous

sway when we spotted the skinny lads
in red trunks, all ribs and tanned flesh

running along the pier, several
diving in, and one red rescue boat

bobbing up and down in the green
shallows, banging against the rocks

and the DANGER/PELIGROSO
sign, it happens so fast, someone

strayed too close to the pier or was
pulled out by the rip tide and now

standing on the shore a family
of Mexicans, their black hair pasted

wet on their foreheads, shivering,
staring out at the malevolence

of the world, at the boys diving,
deaf to all of the shouts drowned out

by the wind and waves crashing
at their cold, shriveled feet. It is

so hard to love in this world of
terrors, something we must always

learn, something that seems to wash
over us again and again.