Night Driving/Blue Moon

If I dedicated poems, I would have dedicated this one to Liz, and Cathy, and Yoshi; it's not specific to any one time or thing but is a composite of various times spent on Cape Cod, and the long drive home, wherever that might be.

Night Driving/Blue Moon

Your dozing silence speaks its familiarity;
the slow reversing drift of your neck reveals
more secrets than can be discovered in a week
at the beach, raking clams and counting
the waves as they break and scatter, to make sure
that time takes no holiday at the seagull's watch.
Out of the water the clamshells fade towards
dust and bone, the periwinkle snails shut tight.
The trucks that pass us bring the wind with them,
the close air of the dwarf scrub pine.
                                                        Last night
you offered to sing, finally, at the beach-fire.
"Blue Moon" came out, and I wondered where it had been,
the words a joint-legged creature buried in the sand
against the waves, without a dream of its own.

(Published in The Cape Rock vol. 32 no. 2, Fall 1997)