Laura Jan Shore

Blue Mania

“Their breath is agitation, and their life
a storm whereon they ride, to sink at last…” Lord Byron

I’m listening, but not
to his words exactly, more to the rise of pitch,
the static crackle,
his voice on the phone, flint on flint.
From his van in Florida, the man I love, announces
a plethora of plans. I stand alone
on a wharf in Australia.
Swooping overhead, white cockatoos shriek.

Just come home. My mind is scrambling
for words to salvage this. Are you sleeping?
It’s the wrong question and prompts
a barrage of reasons why sleep is no longer required.
Awake at four am, he ran ten miles before
meditating to receive this latest guidance.
Today, it was to buy food and distribute it
amongst the homeless. Now he’d like to set up a shelter.
And no, he will not come home.
He is possessed again
by the turbulent stranger.

I try to focus
on the grey legs and webbed feet of a pelican,
who paces with his eye on a fisherman’s bucket.
Pacing myself now, I picture
my husband’s plump, freckled legs,
his flat feet I’ve cradled in my lap and kissed.
In my silence, he hears reproach.
You always try to control me.
You’re toxic, you’re not spiritually evolved enough
to understand.

It’s true.
I’ll never understand.
Thirty years of his tidal rips
and I’m still caught and spun under.

The sea is dead calm,
but the jetty
shudders beneath my bare feet.