My salt marsh
-mine, I call it, because
these day-hammered fields
of dazzled horizontals
undulate, summers,
inside me and out-
how can I say what it is?
Sea lavender shivers
over the tidewater steel.
A million minnows ally
with their million shadows
(lucky we'll never need
to know whose is whose).
The bud of storm loosens:
watered paint poured
dark blue onto the edge
of the page. Haloed grasses,
gilt shadow-edged body of dune
I could go on like this.
I love the language
of the day's ten thousand aspects,
the creases and flecks
in the map, these
brillant gouaches.
