Oh, Vast Sea

Oh night of poetry, oh open heart.
Oh moon playing all your tricks,
tonight you win. Here I sit misty,
longing.  Nothing to console me,
not my stoop, not this starless sky.
Not the cup, not the apple. Not
the pop of cork, not the haste
of these champagne bubbles.
What I need cannot be found in
the pulsing city of cities I now call
home. I have learned to live with
the ache, the watery eyes.
I take this sadness to bed
fall asleep thinking of my loves
and the parts that keep me away
from them. Tomorrow when
the sun rises I will look away
so I do not see the ocean, the
sky, the vast land. I will look
inside and find them all in
my pulse, in my breath.
I will close my eyes.
They will be
there, right there.

(a work in progress written after a magical night of Poetry at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn)