1998

The halo of gadflies permeated the noontime

which was okay with the harbingers

who had steady work given that golfing

was in season. There were those of us of luck

transcending the boxscores of politics

who came down from on high like hang gliders

over the river, but the river said no thank you

so softly and the plush bellies of sails

passed by with some carriage but no children,

and the flavor of the shore was debated.

Cross purposes showed their faces in the clouds

erroneously since the shelf life of sky

changed. Fevers rode taxis free of charge

while in the rearview mirrors, history blazed.

SALT AIRS

Time not being an issue, he'd probably write.

You know the type of letters people send from the coast.

First, it might be the invisible room service he would

beckon

to lift up the dormer. Since salt air does for thoughts

what salt does to a wound, he would ask for his chair,

a wicker one as white as a cumulonimbus cloud,

to face the open window. From the bed,

a four-poster at the far wall with a white bedspread,

he could stretch out and study the still life

of an empty chair in an open-ocean afternoon until

someone from memory unexpectedly knocked on the

door

to slip a white envelope more than halfway underneath

only to reconsider and pull it back. Maybe he would

frown

at the tide of unfinished correspondence. Maybe he

208 would write.