MARGARET GIBSON

On Balston Beach

By then the tide was coming in,
a full moon
had risen just above the bluff, its light at a low angle shining steadily
toward the incoming
sea—
          and within
the silken barrel of each curling wave

a whip-lashed tendril and lariat of light

quicksilvering, unspooling—there
and not—a tensile
dazzle . . .
                  and I thought,

If I could see inside the body
as we make love,

this would be how it looks, this the light—
flashover and arpeggio,
a spectral line that brims and spills over, reckless and resplendent—
 
so that even the mind, for a moment, interrupts its spurls
and spiral
coils, even the mind settles and stills, content to look on. . . .

Let me stop here, Cavafy says in a poem

as he stands before
a glowing sea.

He has just a glimpse—no more, before he turns
and rides
               a riptide of memory inward,
floating in fantasy, pretending to see . . . It’s second nature, isn’t it—

this reaching, after . . .