And Sometime Since

Pine Bluff Beach, Arkansas.
Highway 63 runs through
     just beneath the waters
      southbound.
The Chili's on Olive street
      one of the oldest still glows
            above the sand.
Nabil leans against the banister
      surrounding the veranda deck
That runs along a pier and out
      upon
      the Bay of Monticello.
Diamond-hinted ripples
      play in the morning
            furrows of the
            shallow bight.

Its an awful thing
      to see someone you love--
            someone who was just minutes before
                  smiling and cooking and humming
            and living their breathing
            (oh what blessing have we, so blessed,
                        though steeped in doom)--crushed,
      breathless and limp.
The sense of dread is severe
      and intensely sudden.

No way to prepare for this.
The seas were just as swift.

He never heard his mother scream,
      but all the tears that she would've cried
            have become the waters, rocking
                              in jutting splashes,
      beneath the creosote cypress
      silence of the pier.
And yet, the beauty of morning is without a blemish,
      artlessly sincere
      its reflection.
There is a tenderness to the edges
            of a horizon-once-crossed
Where, in moments alone--a sort of solace.

It is in these, his most
      intimate moments,
      that he sees everything
Included in, suffused with,
            that brilliant light--
                  and that song
She's still humming
      when he leaves.