Bill Neumire
I am a left shoe, no laces, on the Maine coast;
a kingfisher somehow owes me its life.
I didn’t choose this sea’s flagrant shift
from green to blue. I didn’t choose
rogue waves or the clot of storms.
Why then the ballistics of love,
the freckle, the artistic hips? On Tuesday
there was a Venus Sea Flower
picked up by an architect’s daughter on vacation.
She wore beige sandals that looked so dry.
On another morning a little girl culled cowry
shells around me and an abandoned dog
found its long way home.
This is what it’s like to be a hole, I think.
The untended sunset candling
an unanswer at the center of the sea.
This is what it’s like to have been deeply
unscrutinized, to be the undesired
report of a dismissed ambassador
at home now with his dog and his girl
and both dry shoes.