Poetry Thursday
Tidepools: La Jolla
Quick, mystic - this is the world's profoundest mirror.
The girl in any of us leans a little nearer.
You lean to it this evening, Helen Emily,
Holding my hand, to glimpse us both, though dreamily,
As like your breath that fogs my morning shaving glass
It dries up seaward, leaving sea moss, black tape grass,
Scary weeds - also a puckered seam of seaspray,
A pinch of which you put your lips to, then spin away -
Barefoot, braid swinging - from a broken breaker, your shrieks
Bringing a cloud wisp's blush-brushed color to your cheeks,
Then kneel again to moons and trumpets, scallops, dollars,
And mermaid fans and purses, anemones and tiny stars.
Another winter day, my love, when you are older,
That is, when we're both older (half-bolder and half-colder),
Maybe you'll walk back down here to this place -
If whose precise location trafficky years erase
From memory, no matter, since to it the sun
Blazes a narrow path each cloudless day that's done -
And see how I could come once more to recognize
This world's whole hoard one evening in your filling eyes.
Stephen Yenser