in memoriam

Through the window he would consider the sea as it furrowed its brow and frowned against the shore, lines crowned with white tufts of eyebrows here and there here and there as they rolled with impatience, sighs of spray in the rocks. Now and again a gull slipped by the window, ascended out of sight, dropped a mussel to shatter below, sudden shadows playing over his bed and up the ornate headboard to scale the wall and vanish in the ceiling. The headboard, a sable sunrise over the bluest hills of midnight hue, watched over his frail form garbed in green with trousers colored of the sand, half curled or uncurled, open hand upon the pillow by his head, eyes near closed and vacant. The sheets were reds and browns and coarse beneath him, the pillows languid blues and greens and promised fading dreams of dimming days.

Walls and ceiling, white and empty, as they were when first conceived by younger hands, his hands upon the pillow by his head, half curled or uncurled. Paintings once adorned the walls, and photographs of whimsy, until they faded into the white: first the frames so fragile flimsy insubstantial never-more then the color washing draining waning pale then the people places things drifting drifting drifting upon currents carried out the window over the waves rolling on comfort and sinking into the horizon where the whitest zephyr sails plumed by day and the son drowned by night

Rolling impatience. The son drowned by the rocks where sighs the spray which rains upon the rocks and makes them slick so slick to unwary feet. Some barnacles cut legs and back on the way down down down snapped back they said his head dashed but not enough so the son drowned the son drowned. The son drowned.

Michael drowned. It wasn’t raining that day, he finally recalled; the sun was out with the son, but the sea had sprayed the stones. He was reading a book and listening to the gulls crying over the surf. Metamorphoses, he knew, the latest translation, page forty-two, line two hundred. He was scratching behind his right ear, the cupping of which magnified the sea to an immediate roar. His wife was sunning herself beyond the greed of the umbrella, in the process of untying her bikini top so as to avoid unsightly lines. His own father was counting sand dollars contentedly, stopping after six to clean miniscule grains of sand off of seven. His son was dancing here and there atop the rocks like a feather in the wind, never lighting upon a spot for more than a fickle moment, hostage to a will and a way that has guided children since there ever were children—the dance stopped and body jilted, feet fluttered so free into the air as if to join the gulls, his head was dashed and split and slid down barnacle sides and gashes water running red and lonely seeping almost sleeping face down in the pool with surf rising falling rhythmically just drifting drifting drowning drifting

Sighs of spray in the rocks, vacant, curled or uncurled, impatience and expectancy. From the window a never-ending view narrowing to a horizon but never a line only constancy where blue meets blue in a haze that calls. The cries of gulls came lightly mingling with the sea, lilting in a lullaby from infancy of security and comfort rolling on the waves and sinking now in the arms of a beautiful nymph first Aphrodite her hair radiant foam now and forever Demeter warmth and constancy fleeting constancy fleeting fleeting drifting drifting drifting