from “frank: sonnets”
by Diane Seuss
I could do it. I could walk into the sea.
I have a rental car. It’s blue and low on fuel.
I have feet, two, and proximity. I could do it.
Others have before me. Jeff Buckley (1997) he
was only 30. Carol Wayne (1985) the Matinee Lady
and a photo spread in Playboy. Dennis Wilson (1983)
after diving for a photo of his ex-wife he’d tossed
overboard years earlier. Hart Crane, well of course
Hart Crane (1932). Socialite Starr Faithfull (1931),
she was only 25, she drowned in shallow water near
the shore, her lungs all full of sand. Starr left behind
her sex diary, current whereabouts unknown. 19 men.
It’s dark. I love the dark and it loves me.
It would be fun! I could walk into the sea!
Sometimes I can’t feel it, what some call
beauty. I can see it, I swear, the conifers
and fat bees, ferns like church fans and then
the sea, its flatness as if pressed by stones
like witches were, the dark sand ridged
by tides, strewn with body parts, claws,
the stranded mesoglea of the moon jellyfish,
transparent blob, brainless, enlightened in its clarity.
I stand there, I walk the shore at low tide, the sky
fearless, not open to me, just open, there it is,
the wind, cold, surf’s boom drowning out
thought, I can photograph it, I can name it
beautiful, but feel it, I don’t know that I am
feeling it, when I drown in it, maybe then.
