Letter from the Estuary

Two feet of snow at my parents’ place, in another season.

Here, the cicadas sing like Christian women’s choirs

in a disused cotton mill. Belief is a kind of weather.

I haven’t seen proper snow for three years.

The new urban forest for native plants and birds

will be splendid if the local cats don’t kill the birds.

The problem is, all my sympathies are with the cats.

The friendly disturbers are more endearing than what they disturb.

A trimaran called 3rd Degree spinning around its cable in the channel:

that’s how love is here and should be everywhere.

It seems so unserious or contentedly ironic;

it’s the kind of thing you either look through or ignore.

But you’d be wrong. The question isn’t: Why is love so strange here?

It’s: Why did it feel normal somewhere else?

In quiet places, the present is just gossip about the past.

The future is a critique of that. All my best.