The Lovely Theresa

Around eight p.m., an unidentified woman called 911 saying she had seen a man of Blake’s description walking naked into the water. It was the last in a series of heroic gestures he made for the lovely Theresa.

I have left the city. I will grow old

a radiant shadow

and learn again

all I do not know:

high voices ghosting

the equinox,

a sand dune too dark

to cross

even in moonlight.

What creature cries

with such joy?

I call out to the winter

I think I see you

~

in the glittering sea:

                                   gold hazard of the waves,

a woman’s eyes sparking the cacophony!

Churn and release,

that’s memory

or the sea

at work

to trouble the tender-inclined.

I’m wedded to an origin

not my own, a loose-leaf promise

to acquit you of sorrow, so

I’ll watch you

cull the tides until the ocean’s yours.

Desire, too,

feeds the labor of dew and beatitude,

lovely Theresa.

I have come far for you: two trains

and two shores, and soon two cities shall forget me.

But if the apricot tree does not exist?

~

So the wisdom of the pop song dissolves

O—O—O—,

I have only a sound for you

like one hand

closing over another,

minutest noise, this murmur that follows me

into the sea. I remember

the silence of your hair,

the flaxen fields you hid from me

and each grief burrowing underneath,

a small trembling animal.

The wisdom of the pop song

is to repeat

and refrain. The singer stops singing

to listen to that black germ

of thought, a guitar considering

another melody.

I think I see you

in the glittering sea.