Poetry Month

Outer Banks

       —reading Chekhov

Like cool silk billowing, the breeze brushes my arm
and is gone; one after another, spent waves hurry over

the sand as if to offer something, then take it back;
you would laugh if you were here, at the little biplane

puttering above the sea to trail its ad, STEAMED
CLAMS AND DANCING AT DAN'S, the letters

threading through the roar that absorbs them and
the puttering, gull-screes, kids' squealing, low voices

of the couple under the nearest umbrella—desperate, it
seems, to solve something after their long walk—still

kissing now and then, running their hands over one
another, but talking on and on, his head shaking as she

covers her face for a time. I look away and read, listen
to the surf's peeling off at an angle from the ocean in

sheets—four huge unravelings repeat, one after another:
lower sounds down the beach, higher, highest right before

us, then deepest beyond, while wind lifts my sleeve and
collar again, trails hair across my face, echoes in my ear

to toy with the birds' tearing cries, children's giggles,
distinct phrase of the man—'we will think of something'—

ribboning over the sand, then drowned in the larger noise
of water borne up from below to wash over us.

--Debra Nystrom