The morning is smarter than the night
I’m keeping a book of lessons learned and I thank every love who has taught me one of the lessons entered in that book – even the lesser lovers. Before I went to sleep the other night, I read from Mark Strand’s Man and Camel and the poem that struck a nerve was Black Sea – my thoughts were on Turkey, and the Black Sea, and things that are foreignly familiar and yet puzzling by night:
BLACK SEA
One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on the lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear
…
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?