Off season

two months out from the bustle and the cape's sharp
tip is silver cold.  no girls toting lemonade in a creaking wagon
while pedestrians clog streets, no outdoor porch lunches 

abandoned, both of us, myself and the city.  together we shoulder
into the only little market still open, buy a two liter of cola and a 
bottle of rum in hopes of leaving the night behind us.  the ice 

machine rattles in the dim lit hall, a motel sparse with guests and
a generous "garden view" which means the brown of early spring. 
at sunset, drunk, i walk the causeway stone after stone, the ocean

pawing at its sides, calling for me like the sea itself is the siren. 
later, i'll call a friend who tells me that the color blue didn't exist in
antiquity as we know it.  the sea was deep and wine dark.  wine drunk?

i ask, and she corrects me.  i tell her i couldn't make it to the end
of the ocean's hiking trail, turned back when the sky got too dark and
the wind too cold.  i never finish anything.  the television hums, and i 

ask it what new colors we don't yet understand now, what will they 
discover in two thousand years, bright vibrant neons?  what color was 
the sky?  wine dark?  acid green?  let the water crawl up the sides

of stones i'll never finish walking across, let this lonely wonder
exist even then. let it all outlive me.