TRIOLETS ON A DUNE SHACK
“… snuggled in between two small glassy dunes, facing the ocean.”
—Lester Walker, from The Tiny Book of Tiny House
1.
We make love only once in the dune shack.
Our reflections stroke each other in the mirrors,
The pot-bellied stove by the bunk bed glowing black.
We make love only once in the dune shack.
Atlantic winds rattle the French doors,
Sand drifts against us on the bolsters.
We make love only once in the dune shack.
Our reflections stroke each other in the mirrors.
2.
Let’s say: we never made love in the dune shack—
We kissed and walked away, dunes glassy around us.
We gazed out to sea, we never looked back.
We tell ourselves: we never made love in the dune shack.
We stopped short, where the weathered driftwood found us,
And turned away in the lee of the dune grass.
We never made love, we say, in the dune shack.
We kissed and walked away, the dunes glassy around us.
—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
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Carolyne Wright: “My poems have grown more narrative over the arc of years, but I continue to challenge some of these poetic narratives to present themselves athwart formal structures—structures that compel the stream of incident and emotion to flow into unexpected conduits and to make unanticipated discoveries, as with the poems here! Wit and mischief, and sly love, take shape and reveal themselves obliquely in such a dance of form with content.” (web)
