Lathering swells suggest the calamities

bones return to tell of.

The headlands look mean and seductive.

The ocean curbs eyefuls of its

luster on the shore.

Barnacles truss the seaside hull

of poppy-covered bluffs, and spindrift

slips a caul over us and the rocks

the gulls settle on.

We think some secret's in the cove

the law protects or protects us from.

That earth's indifferent here,

that pleasure's rough as the musseled shoal

we hold between our toes.

Still in spring we straddle the land

our government fences off,

join the limpets clinging to broad sea arms

gone stiff against each roller's sudden weight,

and pick the plovers' slurred

"whe-re-ee" out of the tide's white noise.

We laugh, dismissing what we miss

from our romance --

the houses on the quay, the quay,

an oarsman guiding his yawl

from ship to harbor. Nothing

conscious stays in Spooner's Cove:

the cold and urgent ocean is,

and flowers are gold when saying makes them so.