J P Dancing Bear

Elegy with Gulls and Sand

for Ralph Angel

Friend, you will always be
fog to me. 

It is winter again
and the long stretches of beach are
as desolate as we love.
I hear your voice in the mist—
your gull chuckle. 

Remember our cold wind? How
we could weather nearly anything
just to talk, 

just to listen,

to the sough of the tide
pulling on the sands 

…and later into the evening
one glass of bourbon

and one cigarette
I would be sworn to secrecy about

and then
like fog
you would slowly pull out to sea.

Even now
on a different beach

I see you coming to shore—
a flock of laughter,
the whisper of mist.

Friend, it is good
to talk with you again.

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J P Dancing Bear is editor of Verse Daily. He is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, most recently, Of Oracles and Monsters (Glass Lyre Press, 2020) and Fish Singing Foxes (Salmon Poetry, 2019). His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines and elsewhere.