La Mer

Maritim - Maritime 80 x 80 cm acryl/oilpastel/spraypaint on canvas by Karin Goeppert

SOMETIMES LESSER, SOMETIMES BETTER

There you are being pushed

   along the coastal path

by an eighty-mile an hour wind,

mouth hurting from smiling so hard.

Your spirit, escaping, races around

   like a balloon cut loose

at a child’s birthday party

but remains in your body because

frankly it has nowhere else to go.

On the umbrella pines, which are

leaning away like boxers on the ropes

who want to fight back but cannot,

   is light

the color of good English marmalade.  

The wind is

spitting wads of foam all over

   a disappearing beach. Meanwhile

Just three miles away in an atavistically

   smoky room,

a woman whose smile, without light,

has declared her absence, returns briefly

to show amusement  

   as your sometimes lesser, sometimes better self

shifts groaningly its fat ass from one side

   of a barstool to the other.