Broadsides

The robe hangs from melike a dark green riverthat has traveledthrough iron gates,through winters of counting,through the long vocabulary of restriction. And now— see how the old cathedral lightcannot help itself.It pours over my shouldersas if the morning itselfhad been waitingfor this walk. Seventy-six years oldand still the heartopening like a wildflowerthrough . . .

There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.-Wallace Stevens, “Fabliau of Florida” Where the pelicans glide overheadAnd the whitecaps foam up like beer heads,There’s a cold one for you.Try a Florida brewBy the shore with your beach blanket spread. 1Keep this Fish Camp Pils chilled within reachFor your revelries . . .

Recently, I joined a group of volunteers who write to immigrant detainees in Otay Mesa Detention Center. A quiet kind of connection that forms when I write to someone I may never meet—someone whose world has been reduced to walls, routines, and long stretches of waiting. Writing to detainees is, on the . . .