Let’s
say this is the best hour we’ll have—
the
thickest strained sunlight, tallest pride
of
madeira to bluen. It’s not on my mind,
but should
be. How to keep spooning
chowder
when cream-gutters crust
this
bottomless carton? I was good
at going
on. What more can there be
for
retrieval? Not even the sea lions lift
their
whiskers as sandflies line their eyes.
They
know how a fealty launches us on,
to the
next jetty, aglimmer—one rubs its legs,
eager as
I, to halt his opaline wing—I slap,
come up
empty, no hundred-lens vision
smashed
to my inner palm. The pups won’t let
me an
instant of pause: when I tell them this
is my
zenith, they bark, and bark the horizon on.
Cate Lycurgus’s poetry has
appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Gulf
Coast Online, and elsewhere. A 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellowship Finalist, she has
also received scholarships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and
was recently named one of Narrative’s 30 Under 30 Featured Writers. Cate
currently lives south of San Francisco, California, where she edits interviews
for 32 Poems and teaches professional writing to aspiring
accountants. http://catelycurgus.com/