The ocean dips and surges in the heat,

heaves its breast, I almost said,

like any earnest supplicant at the altar of longing.

The bemused mystic who is half my mind –

well, maybe an eighth – asks why it isn’t enough

just to breathe, to sit among beach roses

beside the changing tide. If it’s all light

in the end, why not practice now, bleaching

out the shadows of the mind? Even stones

become light, you said last night, your love voice,

heating up, free-falling through the atmosphere

of our desire. What I understood

was your breath falling warm on my ear,

your breath melting my clamorous thoughts.

Did I say anything back? This morning,

watching your tailpipe’s cloud dissolve

in the air, I wanted to eat stones, dress myself

in a shark’s slinky scales that will slice

anyone who runs his hands along my thigh

the wrong way, which is any way that isn’t yours.

Tomorrow, I’ll feel the same.

Betsy Sholl of Portland is Maine’s poet laureate. Her most recent collection of poetry is “Late Psalm,” published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2004.