The Beach.

I read every poem that comes across my desk.

"Hello, little poem, what do you have to say to me?"

I am a message from Lord Byron, says the one.

Nothing very much, says another, shyly.

Others, simply mute, hold the paper of themselves

Up for my perusal, content to have reached here

After walking many miles. I think their pleasure circuits

Are tripped by the pressure of eyes on them

For why else would they continually take passage

On the pages of tramp books as well as cruise ships

And travel everywhere? There's no reason. Better

Surely to stay at home, edge-curled in the desk drawer

Watching a rented video. Why travel? You only have

To come back again, say the stay-at-home kitchen-table

Philosopher poems, dipping conjunctives in popcorn.

And it's true. "Thanks," I say, to the poem on my desk.

It gives me the thumbs up and abseils down the little rope

Tied to the inkwell. I never got rid of the inkwell,

Even when I got the small city that now processes my Thoughts.

It's an architectural feature which words pay

To look at, like the hawser blocks on the river walk

Which used to be the docks. It's useful too for backpacking

Poems, who can't afford the taxis. And immigrant poems, those

Which don't scan or who espouse unfamiliar POVs. Tourist

Words take photographs. I imagine they show them to the

Kitchen-table philosopher poems when they return

Who only shrug and say they saw it already on Travel Time.

It's no skin off my nose. I like living here, on the hill,

Above the harbor. The cruise ships come in, the society

Letters fall over themselves to invite the grand old poems

On board to parties. In the back country short words plot

Rebellion and spy with binoculars on those same parties. Down

In the dive bars, some dissipated genius poem starts tearing

Pieces of itself and is physically restrained by the working

Letters there who don't understand the Professor but respect Passion.

In the high schools lower-case letters run about

Trying out different combinations and sometimes forming almost

By accident words and phrases that stop the playground. And I

Watch and wait. I'm in great demand for high-school proms and

Other coming-of-age parties. I regularly book my entire desk.

Fathers slip me extra money to read their daughters more than

Once. It's not as much fun as you might think, the pain of youth

Being still pain. But there it is. And when the party's done

I kick back and open a file where a good friend at a table

Eats a light supper. He or she waves me in with a fork and

We sit down and have a glass of wine on the terrace above the bay.

The sun slides down the slide of the sky, the sky darkens

And we talk until our voices are indistinguishable from the surf.