Far from troublesome creek-

How do you measure the sand in your life,
as it slides into cracks in your skin?
The dunes of St. Simons keep on returning,
rumbling through dreams like bison in bed.
To think of him was like entering
rooms filled with sunlight,
spattered by dropcloths
and motes in the air.
I ran to the island and walked the long tide-bars
made where two rivers slept with the sea.
Buried in music from the green jam-box
and the dancing sand and the howling gulls,
I lay still and let the sun's burning find me,
to furrow out the thoughts and force me to breathe.
At nights when the Southern moon
hung over the marshes,
and crowded the fiddler crabs out of their dens,
I rode Paintbrush without
English saddle
until the glint of Jeckyll appeared in the bay.
I did these things which
did not mean
snowfall
or chalkboards or big hands or jackets
with stripes,
because in the lowlands of Georgia
by moonlight,
no one rowed sculls, and no one would write
of green eyes closing under my fingers,
or shoulders that quivered in fear at my touch.
This was the gifting of that small island,
which found me and forced me
to keep this alive.




2/06/91
GLS