Headwind

Weak motion of grasses and tern before the sea.
Worry’s school cresting here and everywhere
as failings.
 
I pace the cliff path, my hands cupped above my eyes.
The glare steals your progress, a kayak needling
the wide open.
 
Love means you answer, this the child’s rebuke.
A pattern crosses the point, hemming
the horizon: steamship.
 
I didn’t know you were the green pitch
unable to beat the storm to shore.
You didn’t know I was the lookout.
 
Get accustomed to the sad girl picking you
out of the sea, the knot caught in her throat,
and the unraveling of her speech: an endless rope
thrown out of me.
 

Copyright © 2017 by Amber Flora Thomas. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 13, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.