Cloudy, the foghorn, clacking buoys in the mist. People are napping, music is playing dimly through headphones

unattended on the desk while birds risk short cursive flights up from the safety of the beach plum thicket.

Six inches of tannic water in the deep-grooved tractor marks, rutted paths across sand dunes clothed in morning glory,

grass and rushes the color of tarnished brass, like a melancholy Van Gogh, the late northern paintings of wheat fields.

La tristesse durera toujours, he is reported to have said on his deathbed. Undoubtedly true. But happiness may also last.

Turn over the rocks, seek it, moment to moment, day to cloudiest day, a ring of tombstones, flag poles in the snow—.

Is it worth it? Does the possible joy outweigh the inevitable sorrow? What is the point of the question?

Learning to recognize patterns: wakefulness, the foghorn, a book of Van Gogh sketches in shroud-light.

The half-repainted refrigerator stands in the middle of the floor on newspapers, toll of solitary bells in the mist,

green and red lights of the channel markers, incoming fishing boats, dragonflies above the salt-marsh, shimmering.

tristesse

by campbell mcgrath

Campbell McGrath is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently Pax Atomica (Ecco Press, 2004) and Florida Poems (Ecco Press, 2002). He teaches at Florida International University, and lives in Miami.