She sits up there

    knitting her fingers for a silk dress

    that a dead man will bring to her from China
The sunsets and sunrises are beautiful

and she is blind

and the waves of the ocean rise and fall

like nodes on the coil of a music box

striking a tune against the sky

which repeats and repeats until it is certain

a song of images

she strings it with her eyes

weaving the beauty of sunsets and sunrises

noting the passage of little ships

which are always the same

like ports passing in the night

in a desert of occasional good times
    Memory’s blue wreck

    dances

    beneath this vision

    throwing a face onto the water.
She married the first captain

of the cheapest Junk

in the South China Sea.

And when he sank

she celebrated her wedding

by scattering the shredded telegraph

like seeds

then sat down

without waiting for anything
Her treasure was gone

and she was relieved.

Now she spreads the surface

of the ocean like a net

catching

the beautiful scent of men

breathing them in

stealing her dead love

from the wind that swells

her laundry.
    Her lovers know her only as a

    night of troubled dreams

    that never recur

    and are quickly forgotten.
The surf clutches with its white fingers

at her stone toes, it wants revenge

it wants to wreck her land

this lighthouse that spins around itself

and sings because it is afraid because

it is alone

sings a warning and a desolation

that is its pride

that waits, singing that it waits for no man.