The Imitation Game Response Thread

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 25

Source Poem:

Desire
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.​

Response Poem:

Desire
Tzara

Not all desire is pure; it's often low,
A simple yearning to sow seed by plough
In any open furrow in the field.
Its "purity" is asking her to yield.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 26

Source Poem:

L'envoi
Rudyard Kipling

The smoke upon your Altar dies,
...The flowers decay,
The Goddess of your sacrifice
...Has flown away.
What profit then to sing or slay
The sacrifice from day to day?

"We know the shrine is void." they said,
..."The Goddess flown—
Yet wreaths are on the Altar laid—
...The Altar Stone
Is black with fumes of sacrifice,
Albeit She has fled our eyes.

"For, it may be, if still we sing
...And tend the Shrine,
Some Diety on wandering wing
...May there incline;
And, finding all in order meet,
Stay while we worship at her feet."


Source: Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads (1919)​

Response Poem:

HarryHill

Dianna's arrows lay scattered,
...Hare's run merry wild,
The Gods, once strong, have shattered
...Hounds distraught howl.
And here the souls of man defiled,
By granite lips of God's that smile.

The houses of your sacrifice,
...Row by row placed,
Son's and daughter's pay usurers price,
...Not gold but faith
And there, on those Godless Sundays,
Make plans for a sinful Monday.

If all the songs concieved by man,
...In dreams that burn,
Made by demons unholy plans,
...good made bad in turn,
Became cacophony that reigns
Over false Altars found to blame.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 27

Source Poem:

springtime
Tristan Tzara

with your beautiful fingernails
put the child in the vase in the middle of the night
and the sore
a rose of winds
the thunder in feathers see
an evil water flows with the limbs of the antelope

suffer below have you found cows birds?
the thirst the venom of the peacock in the cage
the king in exile through the clearness of the pit slowly mummifies
in the vegetable garden
sow crushed locusts
plant ants' hearts in the salt fog a lamp drags its tail over the sky
the tiny glitter of glass objects in the bellies of fleeing deer
on the tips of short black branches for a cry


Source: Chanson Dada: Tristan Tzara, Selected Poems, translated by Lee Harwood (2005)​

Response Poem:

lust
Tzara

how doves fly, their wings like a V
dog excrement, carefully packaged, left on our porch
some small adjustment, a diferent nib
clear blue ink
the weather here is clearer than before

I want and then piles of hate and doorstops, books
eaten by silverfish
perhaps my delicate fingers
always a plan, a plan as if things would finally work

grasshoppers, mandibles, chewing tomorrow
time isn't that important anyway
overgrown roses​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 28

Source Poem:

The Ents' Marching Song
J. R. R. Tolkien

We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!
We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-runa runa runa rom!
To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!
To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!​

Response Poem:

The March of the Ents
Magnetron

From the highest winding branch
Down to the deepest gnarled root
To the furthermost wavering leaf

The decision is moot

Moot moot moot moot
Moot moot moot moot

Here no more are we for ourselves
We are off to help the little ones
And Men and Dwarves and Elves
Endured we have many moons and suns

Dating back to ages ancient
In this constantly changing world
Our existence is becoming rapidly spent
We come now with leaves unfurled

We are Ent

Moot moot moot moot
Moot moot moot moot

The wrath to avenge our planted
Friends of acorn, nut, and seed
Is a thing not to be taken for granted
Though we may move with little speed

And we may be torn of every limb
From biting axes sap may bleed
Tell the wizard we come for him
A warning he should seriously heed

We are Ent

Moot moot moot moot
Moot moot moot moot

From Fangorn we march, drawing near
To tear apart and smash and rent!
The largest cog, the smallest gear
Of the cursed black stone monument

Sorcery from Isengard may be our demise
Flood every trench, shaft and vent
Drive out Saruman the once Wise
To Sauron let this be the message sent

We are Ent

Moot moot moot moot
Moot moot moot moot​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 29

Source Poem:

Selected Waka
Ono no Komachi

Those gifts you left
have become my enemies:
without them
there might have been
a moment's forgetting.

*

As pitiful as a diver
far out in Suma Bay
who has lost an oar from her boat
this body
with no one to turn to.

*

To a man who seems to have forgotten

Truly now I've grown old
in the winter rains
even your words of love
have altered,
falling leaves.

*

The pine tree by the rock
must have its memories too:
after a thousand years,
see how its branches
lean toward the ground.


Source: The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani (1990)​

Response Poem:

Death and the Number 4
EllenMore

Before your visit,
quiet would have comforted.
Now, a last flower,
one blooming too late to be
displayed, in an emptied field.
​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 30

Source Poem:

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?


Source: Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher (1966).​

Response Poem:

Our Father
greenmountaineer

Every Monday through Friday early
Father put on his uniform
and put on his face for the housewives
who stood at their door for his mail
whose husbands thanked him each December,

handing him a dollar. He knew the math,
who started counting again on the first
house to house Monday in January,
dividing by three in his new pair of shoes

thinking a dollar fifty was
too much to pay for three matinees
whose children were therefore indifferent,
begrudgingly ate bologna and cheese,
but rose at dawn each Christmas Day.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 31

Source Poem:

A Flower Given to My Daughter
James Joyce

Frail the white rose, and frail are
Her hands that gave,
Whose soul is sere, and paler
Than time’s wan wave.

Rose-frail and fair—yet frailest,
A wonder wild
In gentle eyes thou veilest,
My blue-veined child.


Source: Poetry (May 1917)​

Response Poem:

Flower Given Prose
bflagsst

A crowd of poppies burst on Spring's wan wave,
rose failed, she picked them for me to save.
Charlotte knows as Charlotte often grows—
how the forms resemble flowers
whether or not they decorate medieval bowers.

There were the demands of her mother,
unruly window boxes and tipped potting stumps
need tidying through the mellow of Summer,
when the grass is green and interchangeably so,
with the hell of the heat breaching flower given prose.

Oh, how our young Hekate's cast her net tonight,
catching June buggies in jars for sacred fires;
Charlotte knows as Charlotte often grows—
how the forms seem to devour
our well or misspent childhood hours.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 32

Source Poem:

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


Source: Selected Poems (1985)​

Response Poem:

Metaphorical
greenmountaineer

what becomes when
a wheel

barrow isn't
that word

not that noun
or verb

or that chicken
either?​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 33

Source Poem:

A Report to an Academy
Joel Brouwer

And so among the starry refineries
and cattail ditches of New Jersey
his bus dips from egg-white sky into shadow.
When he next looks up from Kafka a blur
of green sanatorium tile flows by
then presto, Port Authority, full daylight.
He has been cheated of the river, dawn,
a considered fingering of his long
and polished rosary of second thoughts.
Is it any wonder children are born
weeping? Out to Eighth Avenue to walk
twenty blocks home to her sleeping curve
beneath a sheet. He cracks three eggs into
a bowl and says to each, Oh you got trouble?
The yellow yolk is his, the orange is hers,
the third simply glistens, noncommittal.
Except to mention Kafka's restlessness
before his death, his trips from spa to spa
to country house to sanatorium,
and that she's awake now, sweet with sleep sweat,
patting her belly's taut carapace and yes
hungry as an ape but first a kiss mister
how was your trip and what have you brought us,
and that the knowledge that dooms a marriage
is the knowledge prerequisite to marriage,
the poem has nothing further to report.


Source: Poetry (December 2006)​

Response Poem:

Nothing to Report
greenmountaineer

I petted cats, palmed their shoulders
in their occasional empty apartments.
I woke at eight, walked to the office
after we preened each other again.
Dinner was also at eight, fingernails
were always polished,
wrapped around Dom Pérignon.
My annual reports were shared by mostly
white men in tall buildings,
singing it was a very good year.
But soon my voice turned hoarse,
my words by the looks on their faces
were grunts. Confused, I scratched my chin.
My stubble now was gray,
and women who once wore pleather
and sunbathed on their rooftops
no longer lived with roommates.

Why, just the other day, Louise
was buying coloring books
down on Bleeker Street.
She promised to get together for coffee
some day, I suppose some Sunday
morning when church bells clang,
disturbing sleep. I get up to pee,
unwrap my shirt from Mr. Ling's,
snake two arms in, sit down for the feet.
Perhaps I've gained a little weight.
My wallet's too big to fit in my pants,
although there are no photos in it.
There's no one to take to brunch
and nothing to report
I say to the ape in the mirror.
Go back to bed; go back to sleep.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 34

Source Poem:

I Sit by the Window
Joseph Brodsky

I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on--no need for coke, or grass.
I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn't often.

I said the forest's only part of a tree.
Who needs the whole girl if you've got her knee?
Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,
the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.
I sit by the window. The dishes are done.
I was happy here. But I won't be again.

I wrote: The bulb looks at the flower in fear,
and love, as an act, lacks a verb; the zer-
o Euclid thought the vanishing point became
wasn't math--it was the nothingness of Time.
I sit by the window. And while I sit
my youth comes back. Sometimes I'd smile. Or spit.

I said that the leaf may destory the bud;
what's fertile falls in fallow soil--a dud;
that on the flat field, the unshadowed plain
nature spills the seeds of trees in vain.
I sit by the window. Hands lock my knees.
My heavy shadow's my squat company.

My song was out of tune, my voice was cracked,
but at least no chorus can ever sing it back.
That talk like this reaps no reward bewilders
no one--no one's legs rest on my sholders.
I sit by the window in the dark. Like an express,
the waves behind the wavelike curtain crash.

A loyal subject of these second-rate years,
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.


Source: Collected Poems in English (2000)​

Response Poem:

Notes from a South Facing Window
Angeline

It's a fool's errand to worry at fate:
did the chick come first, the egg late?
My life is triumph over time, but time
that was us has passed alas, time
was our window. The willow renews.
I loved you, only you, I love only you.

A season is a fraction of the thing.
Who needs a year if you have spring?
Sick of the winter that froze as high
as crosses that held up a painted sky
we once drove by. I'm still intact
on the driver's side. We won't be back.

Do you think an acorn can end an oak,
that passion grown passive lacks hope
or is it just action amiss, an improbable
cat with two lives or six, time insoluble--
a construct? The window I see
is a mirror times my own company.

An acorn that lands in a field of dust
might end the tree, possibility crushed
by careless feet or a child who picks it up
and for no good reason cracks the nut.
I can't make myself look at the gray
outside the panes on a dusty day.

My words are unsteady, ideas confused,
and who will care whether I've misused
this time to slog through mediocrity?
Anyone can critique, advice is free,
but who will say that now comes light,
who that day's no longer night?

Don't ask me what I hope to achieve:
I stumble, struggle, I can't conceive
of clarity. Some days are second rate.
Sometimes I miss the boat, it's too late,
I'm in the dark and the glass feels cold
like the sky's in me, empty and old.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 35

Source Poem:

In a Grove
Michael Earl Craig

Kurosawa was a moralist.
It is said he took and gently bent
Akutagawa’s grove.

Akutagawa was trying to show
us something. It is said he wore
cold wet gloves when he wrote.


Source: Poetry (April 2014)​

Response Poem:

Blow Up
Tzara

Antonioni would paint even grass
so he could photograph
the right color.

Cortázar wrote the way that film develops—
slowly, layered, messy,
like chilling some swift liquid still.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 36

Source Poem:

Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht
Heinrich Heine

Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,
Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag.
Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert,
Der Tag hat mich müd gemacht.

Über mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum,
Drin singt die junge Nachtigall;
Sie singt von lauter Liebe -
Ich hör es sogar im Traum.

O Death, that is the Cooling Night
Heinrich Heine

O Death, that is the cooling night,
And Life, that is the sultry day.
It's darkening, I'm sleepy,
The day, it has made me tired.

Over my bed arises a tree,
Where sings the youthful nightingale;
She sings of love so boldly,
I dream, yet it reaches me.


Translation by AlwaysHungry​

Response Poem:

Those Things that Fall Away with Time
AlwaysHungry

Those things that fall away with time,
A trail of burdens, cast aside,
Those griefs that once consumed me so
Recede below me as I climb.

I like the peace that twilight brings,
The silence of the fading day.
Then from the embers of my fire
The Phoenix coughs, and spreads its wings.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 37

Source Poem:

Another Feeling
Ruth Stone

Once you saw a drove of young pigs
crossing the highway. One of them
pulling his body by the front feet,
the hind legs dragging flat.
Without thinking,
you called the Humane Society.
They came with a net and went for him.
They were matter of fact, uniformed;
there were two of them,
their truck ominous, with a cage.
He was hiding in the weeds. It was then
you saw his eyes. He understood.
He was trembling.
After they took him, you began to suffer regret.
Years later, you remember his misfit body
scrambling to reach the others.
Even at this moment, your heart
is going too fast; your hands sweat.


Source: In the Dark (2004)​

Response Poem:

Another Dream
greenmountaineer

The song you sang when you pushed
up from Parris Island
you sang again when rounding up
wives and kids and anything
that looked like punji sticks.
Recon said they ran
but left behind
one of them among the reeds,
his forearms pulling legs.
You called for Gunny, he'd know what,
who came for him unstrapped.
You saw it in his slanty eyes.
Years later still the dream:
a pint of blood
inside your brain
you hope will wash away those eyes
and beads of sweat
that turn from red
to black stains on your pockmarked skin.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 38

Source Poem:

This Is a Photograph of Me
Margaret Atwood

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)


Source: The Circle Game (1998)​

Response Poem:

Self-Portrait as Wyoming
EllenMore

The sky is clear and blue and featureless
as a paint chip
of latex semi-gloss.

The horizon cuts straight across
the lower third of the image,
dry brown waves of grass
rolling toward the lens like the tide.

There is nothing else
in the photograph. No ribbon
of asphalt, no fenceposts, no antelope
or any other life.

This could mean I am open to things
the way a flower opens itself to the sun or
that I am empty
or perhaps it means that I am somehow lost.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 39

Source Poem:

A Certain Slant Of Sunlight
Ted Berrigan

In Africa the wine is cheap, and it is
on St. Mark's Place too, beneath a white moon.
I'll go there tomorrow, dark bulk hooded
against what is hurled down at me in my no hat
which is weather: the tall pretty girl in the print dress
under the fur collar of her cloth coat will be standing
by the wire fence where the wild flowers grow not too tall
her eyes will be deep brown and her hair styled 1941 American
will be too; but
I'll be shattered by then
But now I'm not and can also picture white clouds
impossibly high in blue sky over small boy heartbroken
to be dressed in black knickers, black coat, white shirt,
buster-brown collar, flowing black bow-tie
her hand lightly fallen on his shoulder, faded sunlight falling
across the picture, mother & son, 33 & 7, First Communion Day, 1941--
I'll go out for a drink with one of my demons tonight
they are dry in Colorado 1980 spring snow.


Source: Selected Poems (1994)​

Response Poem:

Waiting On The Sunrise Express
Angeline

At 4 am in Penn Station what you do is drink
scotch, avoid the unsteady fluorescent tubes
that beat outside the bar where benches sit
and eyes you don't want to meet. No moon,
just steam, soot and noise, which in New Jersey
is weather. Another girl is sleek, urbane
on her Manhattan bench and street,
a stylish centerpiece between tall buildings:
black hair, green eyes, a curly lambskin coat,
even the dog at her feet is smiling.
Neither of us will shatter
until 1971 so we meet another time
at the Memorial Day parade, where I am
still as the photo, furiously beribboned,
restless in the shade of Mama's skirt, watching
Sister twirl and pass.
First southbound train leaves at 5:45.
Morning will be smoky gray and I'll sleep
in the soothing roll and clack. Outside the tunnel
snow will fall like a benediction.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 40

Source Poem:

Zen & the Art of Poetry
Erica Jong

Letting the mind go,
letting the pen, the breath,
the movement of images in & out
of the mouth
go calm, go rhythmic
as the rise & fall of waves,
as one sits in the lotus position
over the world,
holding the pen so lightly
that it scarcely stains the page,
holding the breath
in the glowing cage of the ribs,
until the heart
is only a living lantern
fueled by breath,
& the pen writes
what the heart wills
& the whole world goes out,
goes black,
but for the hard, clear stars
below.


Source: At the Edge of the Body (1979)​

Response Poem:

Zen in the Woodpile
Tristesse2

First slow warmth
fleece and toque,
boots and gloves covering
all bases.
Opening cold kiss,
eyes close in shock.
Frozen crunch of snow
dying under foot,
record of my passing.

In the fragrance of the barn
the axe hangs
still.
I lift it down, heft it
work-like.

Lumpy log pile
under blanketing snow
grumbles awake.

A long dead arm
of a gnarled apple tree
bereft of fruit or leaf
will burn hot and silent
filling the room with summer.

One strike makes
two
the start of meditation.​

 

[Tzara]

Challenge Response 41

Source Poem:

The House Dog's Grave
(Haig, an English bulldog)
Robinson Jeffers

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the night through
I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read—and I fear often grieving for me—
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope than when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that's too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided....
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.


Source: Selected Poems (1965)​

Response Poem:

Belle
greenmountaineer

I know why old people want to die
At home before the fire,
Hearing familiarity
Instead of fearing the funeral pyre.

Belle, you began bumping into
objects, cats, even pants legs and then
Too soon it was into the living room
Walls where you no longer ran

To stop on your hind paws facing the sun
Under which you just had to chase
That stick for no other reason than fun,
And you just had to dive into the creek

For it, except when the Dog God of Thunder
Leveled grass like a hurricane.
Poor Belle, you hid under our bed,
Wouldn't come out for anything,

Not even a biscuit,
Except if a stranger came to the door
To get himself out of the rain.
You had to defend the pack after all,

the Alpha and the Beta dogs. But tonight
I'm no longer Alpha Dog,
sad, of course, but something else,
something about plans and God

and memories reminding me
life is here and now, even with the pain.
You never really showed me pain.
For me, I fear I haven't changed

With every shovelful of dirt,
For every stomp of boot on earth,
For every step not looking back,
God, it hurts! God, it hurts!​

 

[Angeline]

^Bump^

 

[greenmountaineer]

Happiness

by Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Source: Poetry (February 1995).


Reflection in a Wineglass

Someday we shall be empty.
There's no accounting for it,
no image, nor words
that come to mind.

And how should I take this emptiness?
I make a feast in honor of what
was lost and will be lost.
In its place I fill my day with work
and, yes, I fill it with play.
I fill myself with courtesies
in checkout lanes, say hello
to the priest I knew as an altar boy,
my next door neighbor mowing the lawn,
and the paperboy riding his bike.
I fill myself with friends.
At night, I fill myself with you
and you with me.

Emptiness has its place nonetheless
and comes like a monk in his cell
without beads,
without a prayer for anything.
Life is a dream some say. Friends
are a dream. You are a dream,
a wonderful dream, and when I am empty,
you too shall be,
the both of us part of a name
that has no name
at a time of no accounting,
neither full nor empty.

 

[Angeline]

Memory of Cape Cod
Edna St. Vincent Millay

The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro.
I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating, sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .

They said: Come along! They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand and come along, it's long after sunset!
The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along by Long Nook, the wind's died down!
They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your shells, too, and come along, we'll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.

Let me listen to wind in the ash . . . it sounds like surf on the shore.

SOURCE: Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay;1956



Lucid Dreaming On Island Beach

I dream of the breeze and the shush of the surf on the sand. Island Beach
I dream of you with eyes open . . . . Run away, rise away you racketing gulls, pink-throated . . . .

I see you but you never speak. You show me pebbles, holding them as if they're diamonds.

Traffic will be crawling thick on Route 9. The pines will twist away to the sea,
the wind reminding I've left pebbles, scattered clues on the sand.
You said "Go along now, I'll find you on another shore, maybe Stinson Beach."

Cars are hooshing past the pines . . . it sounds like an echo of waves.