Far out at sea, I looked
toward the elusive coast.
Would it appear before evening?
Would I love
the swamps, ragged palm trees, crabs
clattering their pincers
over the black volcanic beach?
If you call that love. I do, because, after all,
there’d be something, not nothing,
in all the remembered ice of a life gone missing.
I did not love those days, till age said, wait,
the ritual of morning
will always see you through. It will replace
the cold beautiful moon
hanging low
in the eastern sky.
Earlier, there was only myself. I hadn’t seen
all those doubles coming along
though I always understood
that the moon would double and triple
like all my friends.
What I loved
was the crowd closing in –
my look-alikes, which weren’t, really.
It’s land that’s important, anyhow,
whichever island you happen to reach.
One is as good as another.
To ask for hibiscus – or walruses – or bubbling pools of lava
is perfectly pointless.
Soon land will loom up, and I’ll disembark,
waving goodbye
to the ship that carried me there.
So glad I never encountered
lurking pirates, whirlpool gulfs.
This is a better
point of departure.
--Patricia Carlin
Patricia Carlin's books include Second Nature, QUANTUM JITTERS and ORIGINAL GREEN all from Marsh Hawk Press. She has published widely in journals and anthologies such as Boulevard, BOMB, Verse, American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, POOL, The Literary Review, The Manhattan Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency; and she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and VCCA. She teaches literature and poetry writing at The New School, and she co-edits the poetry journal Barrow Street.
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