This time it's Marlboro Lights
instead of Salems,
and this time it's a boy
even more handsome than the other one.
The marsh grass is still that
plaintive shade of green,
and it's the same ocean.

Along the shallow river to the
sea I saw a gray heron
trying to lift itself,
lily pads alive with their own
white and luscious luxe.
And I was wearing a white linen shirt
and being carried in a canoe
to the edge of the marsh.

These seasons come and go and--
every green thing restless
for its burrowing place and
then the rising and-- never satisfied
to be still for very long,
coming back regardless
to lengthen along the water's green plank:
stripeheads, and sloe-eyed frogs.

This is the song of the immaculate
river, half salt/
fresh water recapitulation
of bramble tunnel and
mud flat. I have been in
this canoe a long time
in the middle passage
of someone else's journey.

And now I'm smoking and
thinking about the boy,
the brown summer in his skin,
his hair wild as the everything around me
I can't have.

I will smoke myself senseless and--
I will lay this day flat
and all the others with the
colder ones coming on,
and the ocean keeps coming back for more,
for more of it.

Mary DeBow