^{for Charles Wright}

Hot and almost breezeless today, Cap Canaille
greyed out by a scrim of equinoctial haze
across the endless cobalt blue of the sea.
My windows are open and motionless, idle as air,
and the grumbling of an excursion boat reaches me
from the port where it’s headed past the point
to the limestone fjords of the Calanques.
 
I make out the white ribbon of a kite’s tail
trailing behind the wake of a Zodiac boat,
and gaze at the sky streaked by fletchings of cirrus
and the twisted bunting of a contrail hung by a jet.
When the black shell of a 2-man cuts
through the turquoise arpeggios of the sea,
I try and divine the hermeneutics of its silent music.
 
We sparkle and shine, we toss silver chains
on the shoulders of waters, we drive and feather-stroke
to break through waves of the ten-thousand things.
We take after our betters, if we can, the star-navigator
who points the way through the fading choir of celestial lights
God only knows but for the baroque map of his devotions.