The Gulf

          — for my mother

On the fourth birthday of your afterlife
I rent a house that might as well be in
the ocean. Two circumspect pelicans
drift across my watery yard. And if
I get a yen for fish, I can cast my line
right off the front deck. And look! There's a skiff
piloted by Señor Hemingway himself.

But that's not true. This is not an island
of ghosts. I don't even think that there's
a graveyard near. There's a little road,
and a tackle shop, and a general store,
and then the gulf, which I can almost see from here . . .

Which is to say that I miss those grand
versions of any circumstance that you
found too minor, too cheerless or bland
to report sans fiction, choice residue
of a blatant lie, your one-woman band
marching in some exaggerated aspect of a negligible truth.

Therefore, the sand is not off-brown, it's white
as Siberian snow. The stretch between it
and this house is not a fetid swamp but
a "mosquito preserve." And this is no
ersatz island lullaby composed of woe,
but a testament to you whereby
a few clouds drift across a cloudless sky.

James Kimbrell
My Psychic
Sarabande Books

Copyright © 2006 by James Kimbrell.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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