Let’s lie here for a moment and talk.
The pristine path describes the borders
of a farm abandoned, reserved
as a letter from the loved
no longer and no longer known.
The blossoms, and there are hundreds,
carry each a touch of salt.
The wind, with its million proofs,
tossed them into our path.
We don’t have to say the body breaks.
In the sun by the bay,
it lays broken on the granite.
The circular path doesn’t beckon.
It’s legislated. So five minutes is a lifetime,
the slap and regroup of the tide
throwing its weight to the shine and sultry air.
Salt and slight, a pressure
on the warmed skin, a pleasure
on what is not built—
words our mouths feel,
not obliged to make—to heal entirely.
We love this,
how it shatters and gathers,
white and rainbow spume
to the dull pea-green of home.
In the afternoon sun, a lifetime, a lull—
O on our throne we cannot.
—Richard Meier, “Bayshore”
Photography credit Justin Fantl
