Now is the time your memory
has not yet settled,
is still in the air—just stirred, with mine,
the visions, entwining.
I’ve tossed you the football, the soft-colored one
made of frozen egg-white foam
and now you look so embarrassingly beautiful
trying to spiral back to me. Instead,
it’s your smile.
So now I know—later, I will write you,
saying I’ve never forgotten this way you look
held in this heat, caressed by this wind.
How the sea is roaring! How it seems
to have just found its voice, never more
heard in me than now.
And the waves, rolling like the tongue of a dog
coddling at its absolute happiest.
But what do I look like to you? Do I look like
my naked spirit, winnowed?
Because that’s what I am in front of you now.
Must only the ocean notice, and wait before
it, too, gets washed away?