The House on Saltaire

Tonight, like so many nights,
Cooush, I hear the sound,
the splash of the sea.
Salty transparent like the sweat
that drips from my brow to lips.
“Kiss me, I’m not crying,” I call out.
No answers except the wind
briskly blowing across the bay.
I imagine you would be as tearful as me,
when the smell of untraveled places
enters your nostrils
by means of the sunset wind.
It’s not painful or harsh like low tide,
I think, wiping my wind-induced tears,
looking out towards Block Island and the Sound.
“You’re not far from there, a few miles or so
from point to point,”
but the Whaler will not take me that far—
not against the waves of a southeastern wind.
Tonight, like so many nights,
I’m not there,
I cannot be.