Yarmouth II

The morning afterrooms a blade of grass in heavy dew,
high arc bobbing in the wind,
depending points,
which
shift everything
ever so slightly eastward.
As if in unending substitution
for a sun that just won't rise.

We wait,
this wild lawn, declining dock,
the off-shore island
and myself.
We wait and dimension slows,
prospects of here to there
and there to here
slugging to a halt,
all grayed this damp hour
which should be dawn.

Off to what was once west,
clammers crouch among water-logged stumps
and drift along with small sea birds,
dotting the rippled ebb tide sands
with small, intense concentration of purpose.
Means and ends
and whatever they find in this morning
are lost,
cast again,
bright beads of intention
studding the vast, flattening expanse.

The breeze,
here wet and steady,
must buffet below.

The massed bay waters lie
calm and heavy under myriad miniatured waves
crossing and recrossing
in crazed directions.
Straight out on the horizon,
a light buoy blinks,
as if at midnight,
warning, home, stay well clear,
or some such ambivalent message.

I am a guest here,
my only purpose to await
the rising of sleeping hosts.
Soon I, too, turn enthusiast,
every gesture a radiant beam
of pleasure and gratitude.
Until then I stand,
barely here,
a beached buoy
leaning to one side
muffled in overcoat and black scarf,
the breeze tugging stray wool fuzz
iinto a million opalescent globes.
My fedora grows soggy by half.

Lights flip on to the east.
Once dimmed beach houses
begin to swarm the coast.
Behind, back there
past the overturned lawn chairs,
up and through the vast picture window,
a high, sharp voice calls for coffee
and pulls the curtain cord.
It's time to go in for breakfast.