JO THORPE

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The Practice of Loving

We sowed grasses on top of the dune.
You wanted to lie within them,
to hide your face from what you think the world is,
but we were not the ones to let you,
we were the ones to lift you, and steer.

Yet always there was storm, some kind of wind
like a quiet wailing in the body; and sand,
it shifts from the spaces it has been in
there . . . there . . . from the freighted cloudy rim,
so these dunes, now crested, tomorrow mounds.
Little wrecked vestiges of themselves.

We move like herds, anxious but obedient,
take sticks from the beach, shape good things to look at.
But you shut your eyes on us, tight as green walnuts.
When we open ours, we find we are drawing
a deep line in the sand.