the grieving married couple

the grieving married couple get ready for bed

They stood, their clothes flapping

softly.  Glass floats covered with a gray crust.

The bones of seabirds.

At the tide

line a woven mat of weeds

and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching

along the shore as far as the eye could see

like an isocline of death. 

One vast salt sepulcher.  Senseless.  Senseless. 

                            The Road

                            Cormac McCarthy

the words he’ll never read keep coming anyway

a sea whose only knowing is push and pull

push and pull a man going in

to a woman a woman going into a woman

going into a man going into a man.  but not like that.

ok maybe like that.

maybe a little.  but only because of the salt.

decide its only because of the salt.  and maybe

the wind.

and maybe,

because winds never stop talking,

maybe even because it never stops

singing he once put his mouth against a drain-

spout so retched with detritus it’s almost ancient

Hebrew, a gurgle of atonement,

something he’d want to put his mouth against

again and again, the drainpipe draining

down his throat in words and words and words that keep

coming up her spine where he used to be

his chest against it sometimes or from behind

the way he’d sneak up and invite himself

in and she never said no because maybe

one day he’d be right where he is now and she’d be right

where she is now and no one would

want to touch her no one would want

or maybe even care to hear the faint

radio of a letter rubbing against another letter

and another and then space space       space

as wide as a blank page in a book

as bound as the spine of that book

as generous and needed as consensual

sex the words he’d never read never see

never hear she mouths them anyway she spits

them she makes tea she bakes cakes and meat

with them and eats and drinks and waits

at the tide clock not ever looking not needing to

he having gone out and she after

so many other shes and hes (though never

as good as him and never as ready)

gets ready too gets ready after all these years a thin widow