Uncaptured

At the end of the splintered pier
my brother aimed camera toward shore
to capture hotel lights
studding the slick black sea,
 
and I sighed, relieved I think,
at what we'd keep. Developed,
the picture disappointed:
those long bright rectangles,
 
then made of lines so precise, now
smeared in a darkness so flat,
so formless, empty.
No hint of the summer heat,
 
thick over the water as fog,
how heaving sea in a static swallowed
the carnival noise of shore,
baptizing it in immense silence;
 
the tall gray and white ghosts
of hotels hovering over bleached sand,
and us past the crashing. A man,
gray and salted as the pier, tells
 
the legend of the shark he caught,
its vulnerable white belly,
its needling teeth.
The photo did not remember
 
a warm wet breeze, breath
from the mouth of immensity,
us on the edge of it
precipitously,
 
and now I tell you this as seen
through the clouded glass
of many bitter seasons.
Should I stand on the pier
 
 now, even now, I would see
with the soul of an old dog
lying down heavy in August dust,
but then with a firefly's essence 

I hovered, lifted by air
and filled with burning--
now I would at the sight
of all that reflected light,
 
hotel rooms inverted into
drowned lanterns still lit,
descend to that shadowed island
of silence within,
 
but then, tipsy with ticking,
a heedless hurried clock,
soft, and light, I lifted
into flight.