Patience

Once a month

when the moon loses everything,

Don Max takes a chair

to the edge of the sea.

Black sand beach & green-backed heron.

The moon

casts off her milkglass earrings.

I am nothing, she says, but black & white.

I keep losing my face.

Don Max feels for his pipe in his pocket.

Takes it, knocks it against his palm.

I am old! She cries. I get gooseflesh

in the dark. Don Max is looking for his tobacco.

Don Max has found a match.

You don’t know how hard it is

to come back from nothing.

Don Max smiles & lights up.

I keep making the same mistakes, she says.

I think you should leave me, she says.

Through smoke, she watches Don Max

fold a strip of seaweed into a grasshopper.

Leave me for your own good! She demands.

Don Max has set the grasshopper in the sand.

Besides, I am too beautiful.

She speaks it as though it makes her sad.

I’ll find other lovers. I will

forget you.