Tonight perhaps the tide will be high enough to wash the beached slum of sea trash away from the house, to set free the loosened buoy of memory. You are my only buoy now. The sea imposes its restless curfew on us. Gulls patrol the shore. The beach house harbors our nervous exile.
Waves lap at the grass.
4 Light the color of white wine pours out of the neighbors window. Ringing the bay are smaller lights, sweet bells. The target ship disappears into indigo. It has been anchored in the bay ever since I can remember, a porous reef of shelled metal. One summer, still during the war, my uncle rowed me to it in his skiff when the bomber squads weren t practicing.