Capri

I come back to the island where the sea
ceases its roaring, and God reaches
His hands out of the water.

It is blue, blue, blue.
As blue as the weight of overdue sleep;
blue of the air, asking to be ocean.

It is the colour of the glass
you pass me from the distant bedside.
It is the crevasses of your golden body;

it is blue in the centre of your body.
It is blue inside the expectant gardens
and inside the climbing flowers.

It is as blue as your ankles
will be blue when you are ancient
and death is breathing on your ankles.

But now, it is blue
in the shadow of your living hand;
blue as the waiting night.

I come to the island to forget
the instructions of being alive
and remember the forgotten sequences:

the finding, the enveloping, the untying,
the losing, the hunting, the undoing,
the effortless setting and rising.

I want to live on inside the water.
I want to speak only of the sea.
I want to grow out of the cliffs

while the moon
whitens the pines
over Marina Piccola.

Capri, July 2017