On Balston Beach

By then the tide was coming in,

a full moon

had risen just above the bluff, its light at a low angle shining steadily

toward the incoming

sea—

         and within

the silken barrel of each curling wave

a whip-lashed tendril and lariat of light

quicksilvering, unspooling—there

and not—a tensile

dazzle . . .

and I thought,

If I could see inside the body

as we make love,

this would be how it looks, this the light—

flashover and arpeggio,

a spectral line that brims and spills over, reckless and resplendent—

so that even the mind, for a moment, interrupts its spurls

and spiral

coils, even the mind settles and stills, content to look on. . . .

Let me stop here, Cavafy says in a poem

as he stands before

a glowing sea.

He has just a glimpse—no more, before he turns

and rides

              a riptide of memory inward,

floating in fantasy, pretending to see . . . It’s second nature, isn’t it—

this reaching, after . . .