Tide Charts

    To create dream -
    the pearl thru wine effect,
    oil and vinegar viscidity
    of giant salad leaves
    basking on the
    broken picnic table
    like so many lemurs
    taken to a
    Malagasy forest.

    Liverwurst on rye,
    cuff-links drag
    the hard, mica table;
    so, why be afraid
    'cause spume from waves
    glows upward
    in so many trails of
    grey-laden smoke?

    This island looks like a loaf,
    a dot or mole on inviting cheeks,
    to me; so wary, invariably, of land
    (and perhaps the Sand Man)
    amongst all those wandering eyes,
    especially the sea-scape,
    curl of snake
    illuminated
    in a sudden, tropic shower.

    See the sudden bandanna of rock
    squeezed so tight by
    shore's edge that a
    grim hammer of stones
    intones a warning?

    Its back from the wars
    to dive, there, among
    threads of water
    where needle eyes of little
    fish ("young fry of treachery")
    are so scalpel-like
    dunes and eddies
    of living colour
    shake you.

    To slake a thirst.
    For adventure.
    For precision.
    Try a lavender roll of water
    curved in bite recess
    much as a conch's outer shell
    dons triple-ripple effect.

    Up the stakes. Skillets off the
    meandering edge are pounding
    undertows and riptides resemble
    porters in foreign airports
    who simply smile. . .

    Purple dye
    on white toga,
    water retches up
    on land.

    A necklace, this activity, in warm shallows.
    Consciousness raising - reef life coming
    into contact with the bumper edge to freedom.

    Heavenly bodies
    parry light from the moon,
    wrath from a deeper bellows
    cough up one hand
    raised in silver mourning.