New Year’s Afternoon 2007

No boats have left the harbor.  No one at the docks pulls up
sails in the now absent salty wind.  In the still of late day,

a pressing calm.  The cloud cover permeates sky, bay
hills, pier, lapping waves, so thick we can not find

where sky touches earth’s water.  Distance glows silver
grey in the sun, a small burning sphere low on our left.

We stand on a jetting hill past the marina and figure
where to find bridges now gone, islands now gone,

where to find a line that measures from here to there.
We consider how to paint what we no longer see.  To see

is enough for now, one day suspending years.  He says
he’d never try to put this onto canvas. But I’d add in

faint lines where I calculate they lie, hint of balance or story.
We stand on the soft dirt behind stones set down to keep

waters from pulling the shoreline in, and we hear faint
rhythms of a language that’s not ours: natuurlijk, Grootvader

zelfmoord.  A family walks along a path from high grasses
and scattered trees to the bay tide.  Two daughters in jeans,

younger one ahead, the other arm in arm with her mother
whose once smooth face is as unbuttoned as her fitted coat.

The woman steps to keep balance as she leans toward the girl
and speaks as if words can not say all that she wants. But

the daughter looks forward and steady into the clouded bay –
Something behind her mother’s words does not fail her.

After them walks a man, hands in corduroy pockets head bowed,
hair a wavy bush of white.  I turn from his loose thin strides

and silence to the stones set like words against the tide. Stones,
clouds, muted sun, and six human figures against their horizons.

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Sharon Coleman lives in Berkeley where she teaches composition and poetry writing at Berkeley City College. She’s a contributing editor to Poetry Flash and her poetry, reviews, articles, and translations appear in various journals and online. Her latest poems are in Caesura and the Criminal Class Review and on line at Full of Crow.