The Ocean

A. Cristina Emanuela Dascălu

 

We were pretending we were eating our breakfast

A busy Sunday morning a crowded place

Faces in front of faces but all I could see

Was you and the coffee the inebriating

Smell of your perfume after-shave or

Whatever it was satiating my senses

Little talk how I like this about you

Never questioning never asking never speaking

About us giving me a break allowing me

To submerse myself in this way of feeling

Not feel obligated to fill the gaps

To weigh the words to touch the sounds

Talking about taxes and scholarships

And about languages and “the Other”

Our usual cordial polemics our

Civilized disagreement over the leaf or

The colour or the sky our way of

Ignoring too important conversations

Accepting reality as it comes as it goes

You constantly talking, about the Navy

And pickup trucks and your brother’s

Garage, so detached of the now

Of the immediate, cannot you hear

In the middle of these fields

At the center of your country, far away

From the coasts, the raging waves

Pushing hard on our feeble edges, can

You hear the murmur the soft plume can

You feel the cold, algy touch of

This water that covers everything

With forgetfulness with remembrance

 

Above us, only the weary albatross

Taking off for his ultimate flight