Safe from the wild storms off Cape Hatteras,
Hastily stripped, in the warm surf we embrace.
The storm we made has flung us to the sand.
A force not thought has plunged each into each.
Trailing our clothes like seaweed up the beach,
We swim to sleep, and drown, entwined in dreams.
The other ocean wakes us, where a gun
Struck, as we slept, a caring public man.
From early dawn, zoo noises bruise our ears
Played on TV's gray window to the news.
Blood gills the famous brain. The rain descend
(your gentle hands), a continent of tears.
One passionate harsh light has been put out.
Numbly we move to the noontime of our love:
The strip of rain-pocked shore gleams pallidly.
Fragments of broken palm-frond fly like knives
Through tropic wind. Soon we bear star-shaped wounds,
Stigmata of all passion-driven lives.
We leave this island, safety, to our fate,
Wrapt in a caul of vulnerability,
Marked lovers, now the moony night is ours,
Surf-sounds reminding us that good decay
Surrounds us: force which pounds on flesh or stone,
The slow assassination of the years.
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