If someone jumped I’d jump
into the warm whatever of mid-
May
        I’d not leap as the
maneuver’s overused– I understand
these liminal expectations from
poetry
       if I haven’t quite mastered
       the rudimentary mechanics
of swimming. I am the sediment
from a different continent rising
to you as loam scraping against
sand. You said wave, I said wind.
The red tide carried us. Whatever.
We ended at Point B. The alternate
                universe if you’d call it that.
                But I said the stop sign.
                I said all kinds of things
                as you drove through
                 ocean construction.

(originally published in Roi Faneant, Fall 2023)