Moonlight

If she were a seaside whore,

She would be the best who ever worked the coast.

Men would dock their toothpick fishing boats between her splayed fingers, set gently into the bay to receive them.

Unknown to their wives,

She would close her hand and lift them up,

Their minds melting from the altitude,

Like hanged men.

Now her fingers become a sieve, and the marks leave their pearls and gold coins before being flung,

Dizzy,

To the tides or the tranquil sand.



If she were a seaside whore,

She would never work Sundays.

These would be spent with her tiger-striped cat and her blind flunkee Jim,

One in her arms and

The other wearing white linen and dark glasses, floating by like a puffy cloud, serving tea.

On the third sabbath of each month,

It would rain,

The black umbrellas pouring from the church steps like raisins from a scoop.

Monday comes soon enough,

So she arranges her perfumes in rows like kept birds lined on a perch,

And says to the sea air outside her window,

"I, too, am a fisher of men;

I, too, offer solace and comforting nonsense."



Flunkee Jim lowers his glasses when she says these things and laughs,

Deep, like fermented well water.

His blank eyes are white--

They are moons,

Refracting like confetti

Across the surface of the easy waves.

________

photograph: Penelope Cruz

One Shoot Sunday