It’s a humid, breezy day in Cassis, edge of the Mediterranean,
turquoise and cobalt surfaces of the sea
                   tumbled with soft laces of waves
curling in towards the tan, cliffrock shore below me.

I’m back again, Cap Canaille’s chameleonic cruise ship
                                                      rising over the bay,
flaxen and ochre at the top, midline to water
      patchy green with mottles of gray.

Shizuka ni shite the winds command—
         Still the heart—
and I’m starting to want to after years giving voice
to ten thousand pursuits that never speak back,
asking for these twisting arpeggios of quietude.

A catamaran leans left on its white skate,
      tacking in from out there,
a fishing boat trawls out its nets half the horizon away,
and I wonder why it’s been so hard to find myself
                                 these long three years of the pandemic,
in streaks of chalk, my profane utterances, and long disquisitions
                  trying to explain dark encryptions on the moon
to new initiates, dutiful ephebes in their desk-arm seats.

Don’t worry, baby, say those towering Tiepolos of clouds
rising like avatars of white mystery over the cerulean sea. 
Yet I wonder why it is we give ourselves to samsara
and not the grand Unbeing, that pure void of nothingness,
dona nobis pacem, and an unembittered Emptiness
               out the dross trouble in our souls.