Peninsula

     Caroline Lazarova

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at a scrubbed wood table beside the hearth,
you refused kindness to anyone who tried
to love the broken air around us. space for two,
it stands on broken legs and you are not invited.

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outside, the wind anxious to catch her tide-cousin
trips over her own sea legs. none of us
are ever able to get where we’re going. 

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here, lobstermen haul wire
into the morning harbors. moorings blood-red
bobbing in the blistering sunrise. saltwater
to wash down the taste of an April winter
and a September summer.

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somewhere out there my father
nearly died once. months later I learned
he’d needed saving. 

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here, a dilapidated shipyard haunted
by landlocked ghosts. rust flakes in your hands 

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and splintered wood beneath heavy feet.
I watch you search for a home 
within its fractured walls. cobwebs and
cracked hulls. here, a tide so blue
even your irises are envious.

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a lobsterman saw my father drowning. he hauled
his body from the jaws of the ocean’s trap

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and someday they might be dry again.