“Full Moon Tide”
I want to stop listening.
I’m tired
of making sense, of having to listen, of taking
the ocean in day after day, of holding on
to its labor; you have to let go—and it blanks out lost
to the magnification of mind; when I fall asleep
the muscle won’t let loose, my back slides, my hip
hurries for doorways, my fingers talk as though
they were held by a talking hand for an instant that turns
off night, and it’s still noon, and the talking ocean
just said it, just spoke the words that mean this loss
is really here and you can’t turn it away
and the doorways are slamming shut, the breakers
are slamming down, the magnification of mind
slamming down.
I’m listening for doorways.
Robert Waugh, a professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of The Monster in the Mirror: Looking for H. P. Lovecraft and the author of many poems in small journals. For thirty-five years he has lived part of the time on Cape Cod.
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