To the moonless applause of water, we become less (you wrote) than reflection.
My last night in New Haven, rain: furious clapping, vertical curses. You stood on the sidewalk and watched me
Laugh. Track. Puddle.
(Go on, take your bow.)
Let’s drive out to Lighthouse Point (you wrote), take a lantern to the shore.
(Yes, let’s.)
How can you translate this angry precipitation? How can you deny me your lines?
Poetry’s easier than love. I take your lines to tell you something. I take your lines to lay us open.
(Cue the exit music.)
Smell the wet street, Whalley Avenue; the dusk of wet skin--
my car’s glass fogged, running.
You are water, love gushing drunk in an open door- way. Head on in.
Sheila Squillante's poems have appeared in such journals as Prairie Schooner, Clackamas Literary Review, Connecticut Review, and Quarterly West. She teaches English at Penn State.
