Tuesday poem #551 : John Levy : Note to Leslie from La Jolla (9/9/23)

 

 

 

What do I see here, at 9:40 a.m., from a room
overlooking the Pacific which is obligingly

across the street? Surfers

waiting for waves on a fairly calm ocean, and,
further out, two small starkly white boats (the starkness

because of the deep blue waves

stretching to the vague, greyer, blue horizon).
But you’re not here.

I wish you were. There is a little boat further out,

not as white, plus
a yellow kayak and a blue kayak that look, from

here, less than an inch long apiece.

Now a seagull way out there, white, a little

closer to shore than the kayaks. You're
not here, but you're close

in my mind and, as they say in Spanish,

my corazon. I prefer "corazon" to "heart,"
for what it's worth. What you're worth

is constantly

what fills my life with with worth. Ah, a
typo, the doubled with, as if one with isn't enough

when I'm thinking of you.

 

 

 

John Levy lives in Tucson. His most recent book of poetry is 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023). He has also published a journal about living in a Greek village for two years (1983-85) entitled We Don’t Kill Snakes Where We Come From (Querencia Books, 1994) and a book of short stories and prose pieces, A Mind’s Cargo Shifting: Fictions (First Intensity Press, 2011).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan