Resort Town in Winter

It’s on the terrace then, that we,
those strange off-season crabs,
discover what it is we’ve come to play for;
diffused gray-shadowed palms, an angry sea,
wet tables, cold maiolica, bad coffee.
Among strange guests no children interlope,
the women with trimmed fur and charcoal boots.
An empty beach,
no tanned, attractive youth,
just local boys with headphones,
pale and smoking.
Perhaps the rain abates, I think I will
drive up towards that hillside church or abbey.
Sit by the orange stucco wall and read
then down the open arteries of winter.

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