The Lovely Theresa
Around eight p.m., an unidentified woman called 911 saying she had seen a man of Blake’s description walking naked into the water. It was the last in a series of heroic gestures he made for the lovely Theresa.
I have left the city. I will grow old
a radiant shadow
and learn again
all I do not know:
high voices ghosting
the equinox,
a sand dune too dark
to cross
even in moonlight.
What creature cries
with such joy?
I call out to the winter
and hear my voice
calling back to me.
I think I see you
~
in the glittering sea:
gold hazard of the waves,
a woman’s eyes sparking the cacophony!
Churn and release,
that’s memory
or the sea
at work
to trouble the tender-inclined.
I’m wedded to an origin
not my own, a loose-leaf promise
to acquit you of sorrow, so
I’ll watch you
cull the tides until the ocean’s yours.
Desire, too,
feeds the labor of dew and beatitude,
lovely Theresa.
I have come far for you: two trains
and two shores, and soon two cities shall forget me.
But if the apricot tree does not exist?
~
So the wisdom of the pop song dissolves
O—O—O—,
I have only a sound for you
like one hand
closing over another,
minutest noise, this murmur that follows me
into the sea. I remember
the silence of your hair,
the flaxen fields you hid from me
and each grief burrowing underneath,
a small trembling animal.
The wisdom of the pop song
is to repeat
and refrain. The singer stops singing
to listen to that black germ
of thought, a guitar considering
another melody.
I think I see you
in the glittering sea. 