I’ve sat for so many sunsets they no longer move me
It’s the surprising glow of early morning that lights the room
and the hibiscus below my window swallowing warmth
into their lolling stamens that bring me to my feet
Days are a matter of choosing between likes and dislikes,
can’s and cannot’s, dreams and facts, hunger and lust,
the end game at nightfall when I must face the moon
The easy path downhill on aimless walks along
a disappearing ocean becomes the best part of afternoon
Across the channel the perpetual haze over the next island
parts by degrees over its bell-curved dome, a territory
I have since traveled inch by inch and now view from afar
over white caps for more certain answers and where
earth has already begun rolling into disintegration
As a child I was told the planet was not doomed to decompose
for billions of years and I could sleep knowing that
I have since learned not to predict or assume outcomes,
only to feel the swirl of breezes off the surf, the palm of the sun
on my naked back, the comfort of sand under the skin of my feet
A golden plover sprinting across the grass as I pass by,
stands one legged, a brilliant male with sharp black mask, one foot
tucked behind like distinguished gentleman pausing on a stroll
Here too lick forth the seductive tongues of erotic anthuriums,
ginger blooms, eager egrets atop scarlet bougainvillea hedges,
gulls and frigates, the tenacity of nature’s finest fading
into a hazy tomorrow from sight and scent and touch
At the bottom of the hill a small tourist boy with a marginal grin,
plastic yellow shovel and blue pail pushes past me in a rush
to make the beach before his older brother does
I spot a humped old timer in a crumpled porkpie hat
on a stone wall peering over powder blue umbrellas at bathers
stretching in animal somnolence on brightly striped towels,
and three vestal sisters of the sand in bikinis I nickname,
“Humility, Integrity, Kindness,” virtues I have long sought but
not yet found, having found only that there is not one but an
infinite number of universes I will never discover and I am
the least and the most of what I shall become at the very moment
I finally own everything I was born to have, to be
This is the algorithm that celebrates the coordinates of my longing
where I shield my eyes to squint another solitary figure barefoot
on the far shore, a speck much like myself in sun shafts striking
through clouds carried by the trades over open water