The Critical Juncture

Like that night back when you weren’t sober,
with no flashlight, just a lighter,
how you missed the Critical Juncture?
I have missed the Critical Juncture.

Will not make it back to the cottage,

will miss chowder (all yer white fish,
cahd, haddock, yer scrahd,

some buhdados, ya sweat some onions).

Will miss NPR sweet-talking Mary

about tides, barometer spikes,

Sarah chopping home-grown cilantro,

you and Sadie tracking porch to kitchen;
Justin, generous, active manchild;

seal, shark, tiny dry brown toad.
Will miss the old bearded creep.
Will even miss his lime-green thong.

Again this year I missed Eve

(bombey blonde? reminds people of you?).

Once again she couldn’t make it,

still chasing some guy in Athens;

Sadie pissing on a dead tern;

Jake not saying his s’s yet,

because, suddenly, now he can,

but back then – he wore yandals, fed Yadie;

will miss (missed) black fly infestation,

hundreds on your beach chair.

Ditto mist that once changed my view:
looking at waves a vertiginous drill–
how far’s away? Close up? Who’s not here?

Dizzy headlamps at night,

as you swam in the black sea, bright funnel

from my forehead the only light for miles.

I miss the sewer-man

unclogging the sump. This year
he didn’t come, but then,

Sadie writhed on the manhole cover.

Miss the second swim of the day
at Great Pond, glacier-born water,

inky forest-bottomed kettle pond,

shot through with sunlight ribbons:

Maybe there’s a god above

but all I’ve ever learned from love

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.

Miss singing Hallelujah. Never meant it before.
If sea gives life, but’s also generous with terror,

and demands whole entry, just do it,

if we go because it want us inside,

if inside means, You gotta get in to get out –

then sun will find us as we track light:

and all returns: that trumpeter then,

playing a scale off in the woods one morning.

Oh constantly compiled list of what I miss,

new desires limning new losses (woman
doing yoga on the end of her pier):

much demanded is much given.

And so all generous of soul return.