Some obscure movement on the pavement like a suggestive shadow
Or the wave of kelp swaying underwater, at night, unobserved
But as the fishes and smaller cells of plankton survive with it
In the wash, never dry, constant
As the rumination of salt water just brushing our notions of a nation and never
But by boundary of the sea, saying all but here, now, around the corner,
Walking in the click sidewalk noise, sunshine and jazz.

Tell me you love me again.
Again and again as waves rustle the skirts of the beach.
Tuning up as for pronouncement and then flashing off
In a fish ball of darting ideas, everywhere at once but somehow
Holding together as a verb, as the going of being together.

Caught of a sudden’ s aesthetic pleasure,
Daring angle of the trough and water,
The amble and purpose of buildings
Withstanding entrants and exiters
And the putting on and taking off of clothes.
She steps on stage, beauty caged as eye and gown,
Voice, audience, you have been there,
You have seen such things in performance.

A glass full of reflections jiggled slightly by a passing subway car
Or tremble of light magnitude in miles of earth,
Static by present but building as an unavoidable tension.
Why not move and she begins to sway by it, turn with it,
The music, arriving with the sight in her mind,
Animating as a grass or vine might address the wind,
Gaunt stranger of March.

Pain, doubt, loneliness imagining the better future or past is never enough.
A tall stack of warm, sticky pancakes.
Buildings and freeways flattened in the desert,
Bent light making a rainbow in a prism,
Making a shadow on a prison floor
With staccato bars and torture.

Write home often calling forth again at the source,
As the river knows that origins start as tiny drops,
Frozen flakes of snow falling.
It is our time, all pooled in the low spots together,
Not a sea, not a puddle, maybe a pond as home to a big toad.

Laid out long before and after the show,
Time spied a history of prognostications, clear as now.
Her voice traipses.
Eyelash of the spot light blinking and watering both eyes,
Dumbfounded,
An audience of one like a cat poised, concentrating
As the elusive trails the walls,
Marking up hope and pain with ultimates and ultimatums of passing conviction,
Temporary as her gesture to the note responding,
Looking on and back.

By Rolf Stavig
4/22/2023