Sea of Seasons

On a late November day you arrive,

A low sun to whet the shadow's edge,

Counterpoint for the eye at the window

Thinking of the days unreal years ago,

Winter weekends full of a bell’s tones

On the footbridge that spans the globe

In the Christian Science Church,

While you made the custodial rounds—

Hello, Hello, I'd say to the giant stain-

Shape of Russia, the Soviet monster

In red, in my father’s head and yours,

Hello Africa over the railing, England,

China at my back. November cold

On Clearway, concrete, asphalt, brick

Cold, while here it’s all green and brown

Weeds in the field, young birch trees

Bent clinging to the last of their leaves.

A wall of wind crosses the road, waves

Hit home and I think of the fortress

On Castle Island at our backs, Logan

Across the channel, the great cargo ships

From a four-cornered world unloading,

Loading up for journeys of a lifetime;

A mackerel jig on your line. What a sight

To see those dead fish with their eyes

Staring, heads chopped off, gutted

And filleted on the dock, someone else

With a bucket, a live one too big to turn,

Dive, to surface before dinner. Yes, yes,

I'd cry for a melting softy ice-cream

Cone on the rocks along the shore, gulls

Sailing for scraps on the fishy breeze.

You'd hold my hand climbing down

Where the waves clapped into crevices

And the seaweed gave the motion form,

Food and cover for starfish and crabs.

You loved the summer sea, winter seas

And November at the window watching

An ancient seabed shaped by the wind

Ten thousand miles from your grave,

I think of us together, and hear it

From some other world in the days 
Before I knew what November meant, 
What seas and seasons I'd come to navigate,

That someday you'd be gone for good

And leave me at the water’s edge.