-on this Friday morning-

to set-up his poem: "The Poet's Obligation,"

Neruda writes:

“To whoever is not listening to the sea

this Friday morning..”

–– and so I began my intrusion into this passage.

I stretched my skinny arm as far

as bone could take it to the air above my head,

waving the palm of my hand like a frantic schoolboy

who thought he knew the answer, straining from

the depth of my throat, all in seeking the great Chilean

poet's recognition.— well, it seemed that way.

––– so this Friday morning finds my head

with its ear toward the sea, clenching sand with my curling

toes gripping like the fists of a tortured man, approaching 

the storm-fences holding fast in the last stand against the wind.

––– and in the here-and-now from my hometown,

ringing with the echoes of spindles and shuttles, and the lost
heat of its once billowing stacks above the weaving looms

where ran an ocean of cloth,––
I'll listen to the sea, recalling my baptism when

Neruda whispered the thought of something, asking:

“What is water like in the stars?”—

and I said to myself:

who in this world would ask such a question?