Rubato: Fire Island

Published as part of Wisconsin’s Eat Local::Read Local program, April 2015

Here the houses all have names:
Dune Well, Sea’s the Day, Comfortably Numb.

From our porch we watch the divers
waiting for the slack tide –
Stillness is safety, they know,
and they have to time it right, the pause
between the ocean’s allegro and andante
when the audience holds its applause.

I have blood to spare today
so I show mercy to the mosquitoes,
let them draw me out in drops.
You slice a tomato with the precision
one might string a violin. You never
measure sugar or salt.

Long days decrescendo to nights;
The fireflies look fat enough to power
more than just themselves.