—and the gulls scream invisibly. The waves crash unseen.

I’m by the water, deck chairs lined up along
its edge. Orange umbrellas cocked south,
octagonal patches of concrete shielded
from the blast of sun. The water is so blue
(not an impossible blue) and casts moving shadows
on my pruned hands and polish-chipping feet.
I wonder what part I have in all this,
quiet steam still rolling off my salt-softened shoulders,
austere black suit drying in the sun.

California is a well-planted median
in the grim asphalt of real life, so the sky is deep and cloudless.
A sky of impossible blue. It’s a place with everything,
a summer like the heat of lust, a winter like a kiss
on my fevered brow. And what do I have?
A pocket of dryer lint gone gray and tan,
a mind sewn up with contradictions and cruelties,
a craving for the delicious. The impossible.

The lifeguard perches alert under his tall shade,
counterpoint to my prone sag on the plastic strips of the deck chair.
Somewhere to my right, a phone plays a beach soundscape—