Masks
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Is it ever too late to be careful?

Is it ever too late to be careful?
In Falls Church, VA

A parade dancer.
Morning Light

Just a bit of color to lighten up this blog. Color fixes everything.
Something round for mother’s day.

and a poem about fishing in Florida.
Sea Islands of Sargasso in brown clumps.
He turned his eye
toward my eye and
the world was silent
as we waited,
hardly breathing,
then the fish pulled
swimming to free himself.
It fought for it’s life,
reflecting streaks of blue
to green and gold
to yellow and gray
but soon fish blood dripped
onto a white plastic deck
and a heart beat
replaced a pulse
and internal functions
stopped in the Gulf Stream
off Islamorada, Florida.
The smell of diesel fumes
mixed with salt spray
and constant vibrations
surrounded one horizontal
line meeting another
in the color
of the gulf stream;
clear blue liquid
going down forever
into quiet dark places.
There’s that smell
of old wood and sea air,
rotting line and diesel fuel
floating up from below deck.
Six people remembered to try to smile
and watched the mate
working non stop
re-baiting, re-rigging and tying a new lure.
As he looked for another secret
that unlocked the flood gates of fish song.
Shoe sole meets the footbridge I mean.

I had a photo shoot that needed someone
new, a new face, even naive, so I called Mike,
earlier he said he had someone.
“No,” he said. “She left her
husband for an older guy so
now she doesn’t want to work.”
“She found what she was looking
for.” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“It could have been you, you know.”
“I doubt it, he had money.”