Short Story

The man I felt piffling in Virginia, some miles out from sea, but nonetheless piffling with his shirt tucked in, his arms flopping, and the face working into his face.

His eyes were often too close together, perhaps they were on some bird or perhaps a bird's body crashing into the window just above his bath.

A man like that taking to the firmament, the little white houses around, ocean you shall not swim in.

The kids are always peppering the fence so now look. A broken gypsy fence in the middle of second-hand shoes, towels, the white shirts of everyone in passing.

No there is no insider. There is this wide and angling remark about how things are.

Gull droppings, the lost ball and dead crabs, shadows slipping like fish down the deck and again against the auburn set. Him with the offal all about, outlined like a criminal.

Should I have talked to him now. That the time is.

Where the mothers of the sea would see and come down and drop their soft breasts on the bay. Touching the sweat on his face to say we are mothers of the fish, the seahorse, the jesus bug the mothers pushing the edge of sand in.

Sewing that we are popping like sparrows out a bush and rolling about the lawn on quite the tiny toes.