Motel View

It is conceivable in fact that waves

and lustre work in such a way, in such

a mannered disproportion, that the sea

becomes an architectual conceit

with which to play upon the measure of

a liquid interpenetration. Wave

and the measurement of it can therefore do

but little to intensify the spume

of water in the sun. Cape Ann today

is seascape, rock, and a freezing wind. The moon

is nearly full, but risen far too soon

to have its proper place in the postcard, sun-

light being quite the thing for photographs,

the elderly, and a decent view of the gulls.

(When thinking back, it is the elderly

that one remembers most, enclosed by gulls

and glaring eastward like the benches.) Wave

and lustre mannered to a fault, the cold

vacationland in April, all combine

into a law of things, an intellect

of various disproportions, which, by day

can sometimes contradict the weather, give

one's time a fiction, or, as water does,

an elemental dullness, an expanse.