02-10-2026, 10:51 PM
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
She gazes out the window at two children burning
trash and flotsam on the shore
like Macbeth’s witches hunched
double, over double, over toil
and over trouble. The little boy pours gasoline
from a dirty jug onto the sand, alchemy
enough to burn
the rim of rocks
and burn the land
and steal the oxygen from air
with smoke that rises up and out to sea
like chants,
ship to shoal, ship to shoal
ocean’s rush and ocean’s roll
smash the timbers to the coast
and bring us back the sea-swell ghost.
She looks away, the dishes are the same
as when she was a girl, time changes
nothing - not the curtains, not the names.
She’s shucked a thousand oysters in this sink
and never found a pearl.
Just one more time she hangs the daisy
yellow towel on the rack
then turns her back
on the dishes in the cupboard,
on the table and the chairs
and the dim-lit, cobwebbed stairs
and on the clean-swept town
of faceless Hummel’s figurines.
She doesn't take the pictures or the clock,
leaves the lamp without a shade -
the dishes are all done, the bed is made -
just strips and leaves her housedress on the floor
and passes through the door - free,
a single mill of salt to fill the sea.
She gazes out the window at two children burning
trash and flotsam on the shore
like Macbeth’s witches hunched
double, over double, over toil
and over trouble. The little boy pours gasoline
from a dirty jug onto the sand, alchemy
enough to burn
the rim of rocks
and burn the land
and steal the oxygen from air
with smoke that rises up and out to sea
like chants,
ship to shoal, ship to shoal
ocean’s rush and ocean’s roll
smash the timbers to the coast
and bring us back the sea-swell ghost.
She looks away, the dishes are the same
as when she was a girl, time changes
nothing - not the curtains, not the names.
She’s shucked a thousand oysters in this sink
and never found a pearl.
Just one more time she hangs the daisy
yellow towel on the rack
then turns her back
on the dishes in the cupboard,
on the table and the chairs
and the dim-lit, cobwebbed stairs
and on the clean-swept town
of faceless Hummel’s figurines.
She doesn't take the pictures or the clock,
leaves the lamp without a shade -
the dishes are all done, the bed is made -
just strips and leaves her housedress on the floor
and passes through the door - free,
a single mill of salt to fill the sea.
