The salt spray of her kiss stung his ocean and

wind-burned lips softly, like first hunger pains of a fast.

How long did that summer day's kiss last?

The seconds and centuries of the ocean were wrapped

like wet wind around him. That day white sails scissored

waves like skirting glances.

She was hard to catch, in damp, white dress. She climbed

jutting crags against which waves pounded like fists, and

exploded into cascading fountains of ivory like beautiful bombs.

The woman laughed and climbed from hot white sand up a cliff side

trail. The bluff was dark and rutted like a craggy, pock-marked face.

Long reeds blew away from the sea far below. A white bird lay there

twisted, dead and bleeding on the rocks.     

She knelt carefully to it.          

       "Look, a broken dove."

She squeezed its head together and traced their names in

brains and blood. For months through ocean storm and rain

the names in brain and blood remained, and often he would go

alone to climb the rock and read his own. In the winter season

wind cold, driven rain slapped his face red. The paint-chipped

blue sun umbrellas that lined the deserted beach guarded the

impassive ocean like one hundred eyes of Argus.

In summer castles were built then taken back by waves.

At night gulls screamed insane laughter, chasing whitecaps

through silver moonlight. The wind sang songs of sunken

treasures, and shadowed pillars of underwater cities, sea songs of

creatures that stir in the dark, past coral gardens in mysterious light,

where the reefs drop off to eternal night. The tone of the wind was like

notes of flutes carved from the bones of drowned sailors.

Through days of sun and hurricane the bloody names in brain remained,

and downy pinions, white as snow, stayed freshly slain upon the stone.

Like Lancelot for two years he wandered insane, making love to his pain.

His eyes were dark stones on the beach. He entered pain nightly from the

back,

grasping her hair like the midnight mane of a black mare kicking moonlit

sand.

Then after a last, long caress, his hands smoothed the

wrinkles of that year's black dress. A storm broke

finally, and he didn't know why. The red eyes of the tempest

faded to sunshine, and beautiful people walked along the

beach like the scattered pieces of a dream. He climbed to the

cliff overlooking the sea, to find the dove by the blowing reeds,

and there weren't even bleached bones to remind him.