It’s a hazy day and an onshore wind blows in from off the Mediterranean
                                                                                               in Aeolian puffs
that billow the straw-colored drapes I’ve drawn aside for this Dufy-like
view of pleasurecraft, Zodiac boats, and double-deck tour cruisers
off to the Calanques and their narrow bays of glittering Byzantine blues.
A battered fishing dinghy and what looks like a Chris-Craft nearly collide
                                                                                                 in the channel,
and I can only consider the solace of waters shading from celadon to cyan.

It’s a better discipline than calculating my equity balance on May 28, 2005,
than rowing in a flat scull cutting past the fearful prow of a dread future.
Seagulls peep like Erinyes wearing white linen suits, sky-jockeying
                                                      and sailing in the graying zenith of woe.
I’m just a dharmakaya short of True Enlightenment, my Self and Soul
paralyzed between Baldo and the blues. . . .

What would the Householder of the Azure Lotus say
                                          about my life without consolation?
Issa about my having lost nothing but the dew of morning
to the engines of weather, these benign winds of nonchange
                                                                     from the Cyrenaica and Fezzan?

I make a fretful drama of sinecural worries, the orchestral churn of care
galloping over the currents in my blood like that frantic outboard
on a boat half past the horizon and too far out for rescue or secure return.