of La Nina and the silence of the season
between us that you find yourself here
again, poolside and basking in Bernie Madoff's
tropical elegance among the mockingbirds
and mojitos, iris and Kahlua mudslides,
that man who died on the plane this morning,
his wife shouting Help! and others asking
is there a doctor on board but by then it's
too late, the aneurysm had clenched his
very being, even the attendants rushing
with the tanks of oxygen and defib
could not restore his elan vital. That's
when the man beside you said, Well, I'm not
a doctor, I'm a dentist, can I help? So
it's only fair that now, sitting in the palm-lined
esplanade at the harbor's edge, you should
see them, two dolphins, sleek and sluggish
under the cool and endless azul spreading
across the gulf, they're slumping along the coast,
mindless among the scissored crossings
of speedboats, ancient and millennial miracles.
There is nothing much more to be said, is there?,
except "Have we come to the end?" and
"I'm glad you're here," it makes all of this so less
temporal, so much time lost in your remaining
seasons. Go to the pier and follow those swimmers,
wait for them to surface in their slow stubbornness,
wait for their slickness to skim the smooth surface.
This is a terror and a beauty, waiting for this clock,
the dorsal fins, the two swimmers swoop down
into in the deep unknowable, and then the smooth
gliding appearance catches you slightly off guard,
when you hear the woman's voice cry out,
and feel the relief, in the end, that the tumult
was complete.
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