Shores and Headlands

In praise of the poetry of Emily Grosholz: "[Grosholz] has a lucid, lyrical voice, a pure, song-like quality. I think many aspire to this sort of effortless music, but few succeed as well as she."--Alice Fulton

"The Cliffs at Praiano"

Remembering backwards, I foresaw you years and years ago, in this lush obvious haven for romantics, fishermen, homeless African wind. West of Amalfi, east of Positano. Our village curves to the sea in flights of stairs suspended above the beach a few small fishingboats, a clutch of swimmers, fill. Whenever you enter our wide-angled, sultry hotel room perched on the cliffs, or call my name from the balcony, your presence shimmers like a memory of great anticipation.

Every paradox religion loves seems true as the hour opens on itself and we fall through, into that numberless and unexampled matrix. As the light steps back across the cliffs and one by one renounces the olive trees, the limestone shelves, the Saracen fortresses, the pines. How else could god, uncertain at the cross of history, appear for us except at a given hour, and how else could I touch our love except in these particulars?

We have been happy in a truckstop south of Roanoke, where shadows of semis loomed across the windows, browning the yellow neon. Love can do without the props of romance. And yet Praiano moves us with its wild theatrical display of elements: headlands, currents, breezes, strands of light. Look at the cliffs, I say, and mean instead that you are irrevocable. Reflected sea-light gleams on cliffs day has abandoned just as you stand before me, in my words.