He only looked away as they talked
in the library between classes.
He twiddled a paperclip,
folded it into right angles
and miniature crosses.
She said more than she meant,
as he continued to look away— 

out the window as rain fell on 
pansies and crepe myrtles, 
at shelves full of books, mostly worn-out
romances and epics, plays and poems, 
then down at his nearly full cup, 
rainbows of oil in pools on the surface
of the lukewarm coffee. She continued

and he reshaped the clip into triangles and boxes, 
into a nearly perfect stop sign and back again, 
only isosceles this time, two legs equal to the task, 
and he smiled at the thought of compasses and circles,
a geometry of love on a rainy afternoon.
All the while she talked and he fiddled the paperclip, 
twisting it, wrapping it into a precise little noose.
                        

I.

Thin light skips the waves
as he wades out to the second bar,
a guess to find the flounder or reds
as they run into the bay.  Dawn breaks 
as a calm surf rolls and swells at intervals 
against his stomach, the nascent 
pulse of a soul in utero.

Time and flounder pass him by. 
The sun climbs high, beats down, and he 
reaches for an empty water bottle as it floats off.
A rope stringer leashes three trout to his belt, a swell
morning until the swell of waves laps water at his armpits 
with him standing tip-toe on the second bar,
stranded in the ebb and flow of the bay.

And he swims for shore, one arm stroking 
the surging sea, the other hand clinging to the reel 
he bought for his birthday.  He swims, urging the trout 
on the stringer to swim with him, not out to sea. He kicks 
off his shoes and bobs toward shore, wondering when to ditch 
the rod, the reel, the stringer of fish in his fight 
to overcome the suck of the undertow.

II.

Happy hour ends just as he bellies up
to the second bar of the night, orders a beer
and makes jokes about anesthesia while the singer 
croons jazzy tunes of life and love, melancholia made
sweet and deep. He hums along as dissonance strikes chords 
out of reach, churns under-currents from the deep
rift beneath the surface of numbness.

He gulps another longneck, gasps for air, 
spills his story of an unknown son or daughter, 
a mother’s breathless cries, fruitless labor, ruthless
waves breaking on shoals of grief, rolling on broken hopes.
Then last call, bright lights, empty stage, cold room.
Sorrow swallows him whole while he drowns 
in a sea-sickness of memory and beer.