25 May 2025

By Philip Kuepper

I watched the ocean slowly turn azure,
as dusk whispered its way across the water.
Evening was rising in the descending day.
I felt the fur of a breeze brush against me.
I sat to a glass of wine.
It stood a cupped sunset.
I sipped the sunset,
the lava of it smooth on my tongue.
A boat coasted in,
quiet as a ghost.
Its bow bumped the dock.
The boat quivered still.
A boy ran out of a cobbled way,
and into a cafe,
the white sheet of paper in his hand
fluttering like a caught dove as he ran.
Had a celestial message been written on it?
I took another sip of the sunset,
just as the slapping of fish off the boat
was slapped flat on the bed of a cart,
and wheeled into the cafe,
where the boy had disappeared.
Then a lady of the night in virgin white
began to make her rounds,
looking hopeful at those of us
sitting at tables. Two men
two tables over from me
called to her. She went to them.
A lull fell over the port,
waiting for the first star to appear.
What a stage to play on!
What would be performed?
“Don Juan in Hell”?
“Anna Karenina” meeting her train?
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream“?, my favorite.
But what would upstage the star
would be a fickle sickle moon.
I sipped more of the sunset.
I ordered the cafe’s special, sole,
chalked on the board
as though scrawled there by a spirit.
I sipped.
Night deepened.
The tables filled up round me.
As diners sat, I rose,
and strolled up the cobbled way
the boy had run out of.
Perhaps there was a dove there,
with a message, waiting for me?

(6 May 2025)