Is this our refuge?
Or is this our fate?
She asks me this as
we lie upon the
white unbroken
sands of
Miami Beach.
Only hours
before –
we drank
white wine
and toasted the
snowbirds
down from
the Cape
and New Jersey
and
Grosse Point.

There’s no
bad weather
for us she
says,
I can put it
all behind me.

Not me
said I.
I have
no time
to be idle.
I’ll spend my
days writing
poetry
and volunteering
for
beach cleanup.

Then I’ll read Nietzsche,
she says:
It’s all happened before,
and will happen again.

Then I go:
Let’s order a bottle of
absinthe and we
can drink easily
in the long shadows
of late evening.
We can press Old Man Time’s
patience to the limit.

She says:
Tic toc, let the old fool
unwind like the Seth Thomas
clock on your Grandma Pearl’s
mantle.

Bring your easel, I say,
you can paint evening
better than anyone.