Sea Rose

Here I am in the world at the cliff edge of the Pacific with a harsh, spare, spiny bush, “with stint of petals,” wrote H.D., red, I think, and of a red the sea makes, visually, redder, but as if faded from a prior moistness, hard and dry, stuffed out of the salty crack of cliff edge; effort on the edge of ease; necessity like a pimple on the cheek of utter luxury; a perfect token of the spare in verse, above the water, a waste that spares nothing.

2 August 1978