Michael O’Neill

Scene

The Adriatic spreads to the horizon. Our balcony gives on to the latest dawn. It’s very early, yet a boy is up and curving into wet sparkle from a pier-like spit.

It’s well under way again, this ordinary wonder, rotated curvature of light, event the previous lot kept witnessing when they were the ones who loved, who thought they sought …

There’s a low clap from where the waves collapse, and yet a silence can be heard. When, as I do these days, I let them catch up on me, inklings of a final lapse,

I set them wish-fulfillingly in such a scene, people turning sleepily or waking up, waters extending for miles, a boy diving, the looker on no longer looking on.