Another Carmel Apartment

There's a rainbow on the sea
Where our Penelope
Awaits her invisible,

Her pinned shot fading

In his cell

For posterity,

Still glistening

His might-have-beens

Of dream,

The descriptions of home,

Bedsheets flying

Due to clothespins,

Car returning in grey

To an empty garage

In glory every day.

Does he stand on the gangplank longing?
Or does he know all this
Will end
Only when the knot is tied
To dock
And not a moment before,
No matter how tremulous the waves
Or uncanny the shore.

There are houses, now,
Encased in mist,
Lost in their views
From the hill,
The love inside
Too vulnerable
To be spied even with
The drapes flung wide,
Would-be widows at windows
With eyes that only mirror
What they see,
Eternal grey
To pierce again from sky
Another rainbow.

It only appears
When you least expect it,
Like the ghost horizon ship
That stays away from port
Dredging and dumping
In menial breath
Some black stuff that holds
All its value
In arm hurl and sinew
Tightening
To serve it
At a reach

From where hearts are open
To receive,
By hearths that make quick work
Of it
In the name of things to burn
And share
And never run out
Of the need to share
It all.

The person there
Becomes whole

In the fire

Of give and take, 

Of nothing really,

Just a wish

That they would know,

In this case, the sea,

The impossible road

That lends itself

To nursery rhymes

Where serpents rescue nymphs

But goes silent

At the truth,

That no one rides
Its scales,
The heart is always
Somewhere else,
Frozen like an ice chunk
Under glass
Waiting for its maiden
Who will claim it
When the tide returns
What treasures the sea
Disgorges:
Some rope, some kelp,
A handful of shell,
The things that stay
In sitting rooms
Forever,
Memories of loss
And distance.