When We Were Homeless

When We Were Homeless

(“We struggled along the coast with great difficulty and finally arrived at Fair Havens.” Acts 27:8)

The ocean sounded like a broken banjo,
and the beach struck every chord.
The wind was turning in ¾ time
around the rocks, opening and closing the
grey theater curtain clouds.

And the entire time memory burned;
not yesterday,
nor the hours before the millennium,
but of days when buskers played flute
on Huntington Beach.

I would love to sing with you again my friend,
or dance like we knew what we were doing.
I would love to stop and stay the afternoon,
and into the evening to listen to
the seals barking in the distance.

But I’m indigent (did I mention that?) I’m upended,
sometimes laid flat. We used to bury each other in the beach,
and make
mermaid tails or
weightlifter forearms,
our heads barely above the sand.

But I am homeless (did you notice that?) not for long,
but not short enough. Did it occur to anyone roaming with us,
to ask
how to keep us
nearer the beaches?
Were their heads below the trembling

Sand?

Today the ocean is like an empty orchestra hall,
chairs askew, black curtains framed by sleepy fog.
Today the beach is cross-continent, and the piano sits silent
with a lock upon the keyboard cover.
I am the audience and not a player. There are too few to
perform for anymore.

But the ocean may call me back from the how close I’ve come
to composing destitution; to the tide pools, the schools of children
scatting the sweetest jazz at the closing bell.

There are still others whose only memory of occupied beaches
is a brittle sand dollar and a piece of grey driftwood that looks like
a broken trombone.