Member-only story
Tourist
a poem
You watch the waves suspiciously;
it is perhaps the only time you face
something unattentive of your voice,
something stronger than yourself.
Already you are breaking
like ice in water, the pieces
floating farther apart.
I want to take more pictures,
but I know it is too late
in the season for clarity;
your face is as gray
as the light, as intent
as the gulls searching for
a thin line of horizon.
In the motel we watch Wheel of Fortune,
outguessing everyone. If we
had been on the air
we would be rich by now.
Nearly a year later the pictures
reveal little of that day;
only the monotonous stretch
of sea, only the slight, last
indecision as you turn, frowning
into the sinking sun.
__________
Copyright 2009 Marguerite Floyd all rights reserved
This poem first appeared in Everyone’s Daughter, 2009
