Lisa Trudeau

1985

late August   mid evening and the town nearly empty
a few couples on Commercial Street and a middle-aged
man outside our B&B who slurs something obscene

no sleep    the dim room holds its breath   the empty chair  
the dresser stifling our clothes   menace like a scrim of dust
settles over everything    I cannot stop my mind from

what the man implied    or the ghost thinned town
murmurs from an adjacent room all night all night
incessant as the sea that hushes every street

morning on the flat white beach knee deep
against the incoming tide   already the air is sharp
with the wide remove of autumn

a pipefish taps my ankle swimming counter current
a seahorse stiffened to length
its body like a bone   this I think is how to survive

Lisa Trudeau lives in Massachusetts. Her work has been published by The Shore, Constellations, Neologism Poetry Journal, San Pedro River Review, Overheard Literary Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, and Connecticut River Review, among others.