Cathleen Calbert

Water flooded the seaman’s lungs as he fell
to his knees on the beach. They kissed,

then lived swimmingly on coconuts and eggs,
but each day the lady’s fingers drummed

on the skin above the bones above his heart
until he left his flesh and said, I’m sorry.

My hands are useless. She worked with this,
erecting small altars, like sugared rosettes,

to lost love and lighting up their palm-tree hut
with the melodrama of Catholic candles.

She didn’t know she was sleeping with a ghost,
licking the invisible and opening her legs

to the air as sand formed stars on her back.
She murmured to the memory of his ear

how the one who was saved was her savior.
She didn’t know she was living alone

until the tide rose, the moon rolled away,
his ship surfaced and skittered out to sea.