I chose this day

Cold light pierces through your kitchen
windows' ever-polished panes.

I chose this day because distilled grey water
resonates with you,
as do the gulls that plane above the river
in the wake of rains,
trim and shipshape as the skiff
your brother built you as a gift.

It is a day not unlike those
your Cornish fisher forebears knew,
translucent, delicately lyrical,
a day when time stands still.

There used to be a wild plum tree,
surprised by spring to blossoming,
beyond these windows, like angelic hosts
glimpsed through a clerestory;
there used to be a mango tree,
a symbol of the humid port
where mangroves siphoned tides like sponge
and fishermen put out with nets:
your father being one who made the sea
his lifelong muse and song,
a family tradition you would carry on...

I chose this day for its peculiar
luminosity, which passes through you
as you rest.

No word disrupts your thread of breath.


for V. V.