The Sea
                                                        for Franz Wright
                                                                and Denis Johnson

Everyone's first memory

First blue breath
first bath

Your loved ones swim out and back all morning tirelessly calling your name

All your enemies
drowned

Prospero helps the dead Neruda over the weird dunes
covered with bees
and scrub grass

gingerly stepping

around

the hypodermics in the jellyfish

                                                        *

My mother floats across the floor of our kitchen and kisses me on the forehead
My second memory
second
sea

Smoking a cigarette

She's alive
but she's acting
like she's
dead

That watery light people get sometimes
when they're first arriving
and when
they're

leaving for good

The cigarette ash falling
into the sink
it

sounds like the sea

                                                        *

The foghorns
are spelling someone's
name

Not your name

Maybe they used to
but not any-
more

It serves us right to be alive

We move out across the water in our stupid bodies and blow out the breakers one by one

Delivered

from our names
into some secret
home

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Copyright © 2011 Michael Dickman All rights reserved
from Flies
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission