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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108-page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/paperback book “Blackbirds, Lyrebirds, WeaverBirds” cc&d, v340, the 12/23 issue Order the 6"x9" paperback book: 
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How To Salvage A Vacation
Steve Doran
The spices clinging to the warm tendrils of delightfully damp and drifting air were the kind of spices Armand’s mother baked into her pies, “And pies lead to skies too blue for eyes, and skies lead to seas and sand and trees and tables and chairs to sit and breathe the delightfully damp and drifting air.” Armand was replaying his little rhyme to himself, his gratification growing with each recitation.
Armand had organized the vacation for the two families, a destination resort specializing in golf, tennis, and shopping. There were three golf courses, twelve tennis courts, and a small-town main street loaded with more shops than you could browse in a day, even if you skipped lunch at one of the cafés and pushed through until dinner. He was confident the vacation would energize his marital situation, which had lately become ordinary to the point of taking it or leaving it.
The moment within which Armand was dwelling was, in his opinion, worthy of immortality. It was beautiful in a way that hurt, literally, and the hurt was cause to stifle a cry of agony, born of knowing the moment couldn’t last. They never lasted.
The waiter on the terrace seemed to be avoiding them, as if the tiny act of replacing empty cocktail glasses with full ones would break the spell. Although Armand’s contentment filled him down to his nerve endings, it could not shield forever against the cloud of tension buzzing about, in search of soft spots to penetrate him.
His best friend was sitting upright, rolling a pair of golf balls in his fingers, failing to quiet his mind sufficiently to be able to enjoy the view, or the liquor, or the wordless connection between them. Daniel had been a nervous person his whole waking life and, according to his wife, Dierdre, he was nervous in his sleep too, noisy in bed, and kicking without warning. Once, while showing off a bruise on her upper thigh, she referred to her husband as her flickering flame in need of snuffing, obviously intending snuffing in the most positive sense.
Daniel was trying to relax by sliding down in his chair. He was always able to make himself relax to an extent, and then he could go no further because, unlike most people, to relax he had to apply effort, the strain of the effort creating a braking action, and eventually reversing direction. Soon Daniel would be out of his chair, restless again, while Armand would be happy to remain where he was, the liquor having strengthened his mood to a degree approaching bliss. In short, in this moment, Armand was so utterly content, he might, if lucky, be able to leave his own body, becoming, for a rare moment, a floating vapour. He knew he could do it because he had done it before. Failing this, he could equally enjoy a sit in the chair, his body softening until he fell asleep, his senses infusing the atmosphere of the place into the best of dreams.
“What did you think of my drive off the tee on the eighteenth hole?” Daniel said. “Be honest. It was awful, right.”
“It was perfect,” Armand said, mildly peeved at the interruption. He had been fantasizing about sex with his wife. Relaxing into the view of the ocean, he was having to work to maintain his feeling toward his friend, a generous attitude of approval, buoying him while, at the same time, dissolving in the heat of Daniel’s anxiety.
“Your previous seventeen holes were perfect too,” Armand said.
“You think so?” Daniel said.
“I know so,” Armand said, “and I don’t know how you wouldn’t. What’s distracting you?”
“Nothing,” Daniel said.
“Re-check your score card if you want proof of play.” Armand wondered if Daniel’s obsessive score-keeping was a contributor to his ongoing war with anxiety, and immediately corrected himself, knowing it was a symptom of the problem, not a cause. The man couldn’t be fixed by forcing him to stop writing numbers on a card. Armand, however, rarely kept score when playing golf, and he hadn’t today, breaking the tournament rules. When Daniel had signed them up for the tournament, Armand had been fine with the idea, competition never bothering him the way it did Daniel, who signed up not for fun, but to win.
“If I was prefect,” Daniel said, “then why didn’t I win the tournament?”
“Somebody else was better than perfect,” Armand said.
Daniel produced his score sheet. “The heat was affecting my swing. I had to concentrate like hell.” He was ticking off the numbers he had entered on the card when he stopped and said, “Where is everybody?”
“Anette and Dierdre are shopping,” Armand said. “The boys are on the tennis court.”
Daniel gave Armand an unconscious look, a flick of the eyes and a press of the lips, so brief he almost missed it. The look said Daniel knew better than Armand about who was doing what where and with whom. The look brought back a slew of insecurities appended by well-worn rationales which Armand had carefully constructed over the years since the moment he had met his friend.
They first came across each other at college, at a frat party, Armand there with his future wife, Anette, and Daniel on his own, which in those days was how he liked it. Daniel apologized after bumping into Armand and from that moment, the three of them were inseparable. The evening’s conversation was extraordinary, due wholly to Daniel, his humour combined with a self-effacing charm, making him irresistible. At first, he came on like a horny student, talking while nervously scoping the room for girls, but he soon lost interest, closing instead on Armand and his future wife. And through the evening, in the beer-stinking living room, among horny, hooting boys and girls, they were forging bonds which hardened to an indestructability.
When Armand said it was time to leave the party, they expressed their sorrow having to part, and began the usual parting chatter, during which Armand had glimpsed the same micro-look from Daniel, the hypothetical implications exploding in his mind, in his chair, on the terrace overlooking the ocean.
“I hope my boy is picking up some tricks from your boy,” Daniel said. “Your Andrew is one hell of a tennis player.”
Not missing a beat, Armand said, “I hope my boy is picking up some tricks from your boy. Hopefully Dean’s social talents are rubbing off. He got them from you, you know.”
Armand returned to ruminating on his feelings for his friend, how he had always envied Daniel’s smoothness with both sexes. At the same time, he reminded himself that, for all his charm, Daniel did not have any other male friends and Armand knew why, the knowledge, and its attending pity, reducing his apprehensions and endearing Daniel to him, his love for his friend rivalling any man’s love for a blood-born brother.
To start, Daniel was too good-looking for men to tolerate near their women, and then there was his appeal, childlike and tantalizing to the opposite sex, sufficient to make them set aside their wedding promises if given the chance. These things worried Armand, the worry worsening when Daniel was around his wife.
The closest Daniel had come to friendship with men was university when the other boys would bring him to pubs and parties to draw in the girls. Daniel would have first dibs, and then the other boys would pick through the leftovers, as Daniel called them, a cruel term he left behind when he graduated and moved into the delicate society of nine-to-five employment.
Lost in his ruminations, Armand ignored the drink the waiter placed in front of him. He was busy contemplating competing feelings that were constantly tugging him, his love for both his wife and Daniel, and the sexual pressure he perceived between them. He had lived with the feelings and their consequent strain long enough to be accustomed to them. He was able to balance the feelings most of the time, and they would remain in balance until some event came along, making Armand’s insecurities well-up and test his loyalties. The misery the event caused, whatever the event happened to be, a gesture, a word, would eventually subside to an accustomed rise-and-fall of emotion whose gentle tides he was resigned to ride forever, because the alternative to riding the tide, in his mind, was nothing less than cataclysm.
Their boys, Andrew and Dean, showed up in their identical white tennis outfits with matching sweat stains. There was moisture on their transparent teenage mustaches and an indiscernible hint of musk from their exertions on the tennis court. They were bouncing their rackets off each others’ heads and struggling to stand still. Although they weren’t brothers, they had always had a likeness between them, the shapes of their bodies, their complexions, not identical but similar. As well, their behaviour, they moved the same, they made the same noises, and they spoke their own goofy language.
Daniel was eyeing the boys while nervously stripping bits of loose skin from his lower lip with his teeth.
Andrew, Armand’s son, said he had won their match but not by much. He said Dean had played a mean game of tennis and was getting better every outing. While Andrew was talking, Dean was demonstrating his stances and strokes, exaggerating the movements until he had them laughing, and Armand, savouring the company of his best friend and their boys, was buoyant with approval, finding it easy to push his insecurities below the line of awareness.
“Where are the moms,” Andrew said, “shopping again?”
“Good guess,” Armand said, the sarcasm good-natured.
“You two dads better check on them,” Dean said, looking from his father to “Uncle Armand.”
“Yeah,” Andrew said. “You better make sure they don’t get picked up. Especially Mom, eh Dad?” Andrew was looking playfully at Armand who was baffled that his son thought such a barbed reference was not insulting to both mother and father, and then, appropriate or not, the boy’s comment brought Armand’s insecurities upward, and they settled in his throat, boiling off the last of his bliss.
Following Andrew’s comment, there was a brief chasm of silence, and then they were laughing again, except Daniel, who looked like he had been caught at something he wanted kept secret, and for no obvious reason, Daniel’s expression became a knocked arrow, shot through Armand’s neck.
Armond imagined being ground into motes and cast on the breeze, a condition he would have welcomed, to become dried and powdered and blown across the bay, food for fish, but no, here he was, in a chair on the terrace with a lump in his throat too big to swallow. The lump was growing, fed on emotions derived from thoughts of betrayal amid a plague of intimate imaginings he couldn’t wring from his heart.
The boys left for the recreation centre. Daniel hurriedly excused himself, saying he needed a nap, which he didn’t. He never took naps during the day.
Armand was as still as before, before the boys had arrived, before his ruminations had surfaced, before, when he had been wallowing wonderfully in the drowsy blissful heat. The stillness now, however, was an aching rigidity locking him down, and he was hoping it would end soon, perhaps in death, by an anonymous killer, a thrown switch, and a few thousand volts itching to burn the hair off him. He believed a quick electrocution preferable to his frozen jaw and the endless tetany which, having spread widely and deeply, made each bit of him a cubic inch of suffering. He wanted to holler, hoping an expulsion of air might loosen him, and he tried unsuccessfully to breathe a sound.
The waiter came by, holding a serving tray against his chest. “Are you good sir?”
The sound of the waiter’s voice cracked Armand open, and he took a normal breath.
“Sir,” he said, “Are you good?”
“Good? You mean in bed?” Armand’s embarrassment was complete and terrifying in a way that made him attempt to wish the waiter from existence.
The waiter smiled too broadly, a disturbing forwardness in his face, and Andrew concluded the man had read his mind, a child could have.
“No sir, I was asking if there was anything I could bring you, perhaps a stronger drink to lighten the mood?”
Armand was working at a stare, trying to fit it into a tiny ship on the horizon. “There is no drink that could lighten my mood.”
“Ah,” the waiter said, his tone annoyingly inflected, confirming he had wormed into Armand’s thoughts. “If the view and the breeze and a stiff drink can’t make you feel good, then perhaps a change of scenery?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Nature.” The waiter waved at their surroundings. “It is marvelous but not helpful when it reminds you of your troubles.”
“How do you know I have troubles?”
The waiter bent forward. “Sir, I have worked here more than half my life. I know when a guest is troubled. I know when and I know why, by the look of them, and forgive me for saying sir, you look like shit.”
Armand was not sure which response to the waiter’s remark came first, the shock or the outrage, and it didn’t matter because they cancelled each other, and his mood collapsed to a bleak state below zero.
The waiter paused, waiting for a rebuke. When none came, he continued. “There is a marvelous bar in town. The terrace is exquisite.”
Armand gave in to the waiter’s assumption regarding his mood. “I can stew as easily here as I can in town.”
The waiter’s smile became big and white. “Not if you have a delicious distraction.”
Armand was not offended at the waiter’s offer to procure feminine company for him, ascribing a hospitable innocence to it, and politely declining it. “No thank you.”
“Very good, sir,” the waiter said. “If your mind changes, simply find me.”
“My mind won’t be changing,” Armand said.
“Of course sir.”
Armand left the terrace, walking to their room on the far side of the swimming pool. Both families had wanted ground floor suites, however, when he thought about it, his wife and Daniel had been the ones to insist. Passing the pool, Armand was shaking the tension from his arms and legs when the sliding door to Daniel and Dierdre’s patio opened and out trotted Daniel, dressed for a jog around the property. Daniel trotted to Armand and Anette’s suite. Opening the sliding door he slipped in and closed it.
The lump in Armand’s throat expanded, blocking his airway, and he walked the remaining distance holding his breath. Through the sheer curtains of their living room, he saw the shadows of two figures, initially apart, then coming together. He felt like a child who had fallen and knocked the wind from himself. He wanted to shout at them through the glass, but his useless lungs prevented it. He walked away, nearly colliding with his waiter who was circulating among the guests by the pool.
“Good to see you so soon,” the waiter said, looking delighted.
“I need to balance the books,” Armand said, labouring to speak.
“Balance them on what?” the waiter said.
“I need to balance the books on betrayal.”
The waiter clapped his hand against the serving tray. “Marvelous.” His tone could not have been more joyfully casual if Armand had accepted an invitation to the man’s house for dinner with the family.
“What do you need me to do?” Armand said.
“There is nothing to do,” the waiter said. “Simply go stand in front of the hotel entrance. The rest will happen around you, or I should say, to you.”
“When should I go?” Armand said.
“Immediately. You want to strike while the iron is hot.” The waiter gave his head a mischievous twist before returning to the guests around the pool.
When Armand arrived in front of the hotel, he didn’t have to wait.
The taxi’s window was down. The driver was watching, his arm beating a rhythm on the side of the car. He called to Armand. “Wah Gwahn.”
When Armand was in the back seat, he said to the driver, “Sea Bass Bar.”
“Oh man,” the driver said, “you don’t need to tell me.” Big white teeth in the mirror. “I know where you want to go. Remember, I was called, and I know why I was called, hagh, hagh, haghhhhhhhhhhh.”
The taxi’s interior smelled like weed and Armand thought the man might be high. He opened the door to get out, placing a foot on the driveway. The driver suddenly accelerated, the car jerking, the door swinging inward and bouncing painfully against Armand’s leg before he could pull it clear.
In the five minutes to town, the driver was looking back at Armand while doing his best to keep the car on two wheels down the winding mountain road.
When they arrived, Armand jumped from the car, his heart hammering a rollercoaster beat. It was hot in town, not mildly hot like summer back home, but breath-robbing hot. In the shadows of the buildings, dogs were lying dead-asleep, too tired to explore the fermenting food in hidden garbage bins. He paid the driver in the local rainbow currency.
“I think you like my driving, yes?” the man said.
“No,” Armand said.
“I drive like that for a reason.” When Armand didn’t ask him to explain, the driver said, “I do it to get you excited, get the blood flowing to the outer reaches. You know what I mean, man?”
Armand nodded.
“That’s right. I know you know.” The man laughed and was off again, careening around the corner on two wheels.
A woman was waving at Armand from the bar’s outdoor terrace. She was lean and young and he was thinking he would have liked someone more mature. There was a mix of locals and tourists under tasteful umbrellas. They looked like they were having fun and he felt himself relaxing, finding it easy to approach the woman and introduce himself, she insisted on hugging, and then he was sinking into a glass of raw rum disguised as a cocktail.
She was cute and fun and her accent was adorable, and they drank and laughed until he noticed her tone beginning to nudge him, and he understood she wouldn’t leave her chair until he did. So he stood up and then she stood up, satisfied she could shed her coyness. She took his sticky hand in hers and led him inside.
The bar was nice, ocean themes, ropes and plastic fish and nets with big glass floats. Middle-aged folk occupied the tables along with younger locals. He was surprised at the number of female tourists alone at the bar and was speculating on what their husbands were up to. These women were his age. They were quiet, ignoring each other, and he wanted to talk to them.
The bartender did not look at Armand and the young woman as they walked by, although he must surely have known her. They went down a hall, past the little kitchen and the washrooms. They entered the room at the end of the hall and she shut the door, sealing in the heat along with an unfortunate blue and yellow bird. The room was decorated in old, unpainted sheetrock, the floor unfinished. The room had a smell, a little sulphur, a little ammonia. The bird was on the lone piece of furniture, a mattress on a bedframe. It chirped at Armand. The bird made him nervous and he shooed it away. The young woman was smiling while peeling off her stretchy pink dress.
“Come on slowpoke,” she said. “Get those duds off. I want to see what you got.”
Naked, she back-flopped onto the bed, a cloud of dust rising from the mattress, along with a smell foul enough to put off a rutting elephant. At the same time, Armand noticed small holes in the corners of the walls, the holes filled with small circular objects, black and shiny. They were cameras. He started backing away and the woman’s smile vanished, her face aging while she lay on the bed watching him.
“Hey white boy,” she said. Pull off those shorts and flower shirt and bring your skinny self over here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. I changed my mind. I don’t want to do it.”
“What,” she said, “you don’t like me with my clothes off? I got a Class-A body, man, and you better climb aboard and take it for a ride.”
“You’re lovely,” he said. “I changed my mind, nothing else.”
“Well then pay me and get lost,” she said, her voice stinging from his unintended insult, which had struck her where she had been struck too many times, the scars having hardened long ago.
He fumbled some bills from his wallet and gave them to her.
“More,” she said.
He emptied his wallet on the bed and hurried from the room, the woman’s profanities chasing him down the hall.
He paused near the bar, desperately shaken but feeling life-and-death lucky, avoiding a rockslide by turning left and not right. His head was throbbing and he believed it was damaged at a neural level, the axons and dendrites useless for critical thought. He stayed there staring steadily at nothing, his mind crashing. His unfocused gaze happened to be centred on the face of a woman at the bar, and she was looking at him. She was beyond his perceptions and when she left her stool, he didn’t notice, the new object of his vision a life-like replica of an angel fish.
He flinched when the woman touched his arm, and although he put his eyes on her, he was taking only a cursory image of her into his crippled awareness, his mind loitering in the room at the back of the hall, the blue and yellow bird chirping accusingly. The woman seemed unperturbed with waiting, for what he didn’t know at first. Then he began to slowly understand, her familiarity eventually cutting into the vortex of his rememberings of the foul mattress and, on top of it, the foul woman with the foul mouth. His inner mind started whirring in the background, quietly collating and comparing the raw data his senses were relaying of the woman in front of him.
His memory having fractured, he did not recognize her immediately, his sickened state of mind preventing him observing her more than superficially at first. Then as she came into focus and her features sharpened, he understood that he knew her. She was polished copper in strapless white, and he was sure he caught his reflection on the surface of her skin. His damaged mind was painting the woman in whimsical, nearly ludicrous hues, reflections of a life lived in layers, a slice of carefree cake in white sandals, topped with blonde icing. There were no distractions of jewelry nor marks on her. His eyes pierced her dress and he was considering her flawlessness continuing beneath its delightfully clinging elastic surface.
His damaged faculties of attention maintaining their detachment from rational thinking, his clandestine mind was secretly taking the woman apart and reassembling her. When all at once, the pieces fit together, he could only later describe his reaction as “lighting up inside.” The woman was Dierdre, Daniel’s wife.
“Hello Armand,” Dierdre said, her voice flat.
“Hello Dierdre,” Armand said.
Dierdre’s eyes were saying to him, “What are you doing here?”
Armand’s eyes said, “Would you like to know where your husband is?”
Dierdre’s eyes said, “I didn’t catch that.”
Armand spoke. “Your husband is in my bedroom. He’s showing my wife his golf score-card.”
Happily preoccupied with their own ad-hoc relationships, the other patrons were paying no attention to Armand and Dierdre, facing one another, immobile, the walking dead on a date.
As the seconds passed, Armand noticed he was beginning to feel quite odd in that he was feeling oddly better. The swollen sickness was leaving his throat, and he was afraid if he lost any more of the tension that had been torturing his body, he would be in danger of collapsing. He pointed at Dierdre’s hands. She unclenched them and her shallow breaths deepened until he could see her chest moving.
Neither had spoken and Dierdre finally said, “I want you to come with me, for a walk.”
Armand wasn’t sure how he knew, but if he walked with her, the walk would be short and the part after the walk would be longer, though perhaps not much.
“I can’t,” Armand said. “I’m married.”
“You’re legally married,” Dierdre said, “which for you doesn’t amount to much.”
“Do you know how badly those words hurt?” Armand said.
“I said them for a reason and I don’t care how much they hurt, because I’ve been hurting forever. It’s time you stepped up to suffer properly, because, from where I’ve stood, you don’t seem to have suffered much at all. I would like to know I’m not alone in my misery.”
The speech had clearly been rehearsed and, strangely, Armand appreciated Dierdre’s efforts preparing it.
“You don’t have to talk that way,” Armand said. “Just speak plainly.”
“Daniel has been having an affair with your wife,” Dierdre said, her tanned face paling. “Now will you come with me?”
In his mind, Armand ticked the “Affair,” box on his marital score-card, astounded the feelings of betrayal weren’t clambering to overwhelm him. “I know,” he said, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Disappointment flickered on Dierdre’s face, replaced by a determination fuelled through a need to enlighten him.
“Andrew,” she said. “Your son.”
“Yes,” Armand said patiently. “Andrew is my son. What about him?”
“He isn’t your son,” she said. “And he calls you a cuckhold behind your back.”
“Of course he’s my son. And what is a cuckhold?” Armand’s nerves became alarmed, an itch blooming on his skin. He began scratching his arms, quickly raising red welts.
“He isn’t your son,” Dierdre said. “You didn’t make Andrew. Daniel did.”
“You didn’t make Andrew.” The phrase repeated itself, detonating in him time-and-again, and he began to break, a cascading destruction, his body detaching, butcher’s chunks, elbows and ribs, segments parting, dropping from his shirt sleeves, landing with a thump, until there was nothing left but a heavy head atop spindly spinal segments, crookedly stacked on hips and legs.
He was weak when she placed her palm on his cheek, her touch turning him nakedly defenceless. His eyes were dry but his heart was weeping, the tears beading as sweat.
Dierdre left him, stopping at the end of the hall by the exit. She turned. He didn’t want to follow, his memory of the wedding words he’d spoken, long ago, paralyzing him.
The bar phone was ringing. The bartender answered it. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Are you Armand?”
Armand paused, having forgotten his own name, then he nodded.
“The waiter at your hotel wants to know if you’ve balanced the books yet.”
Armand had never a been a raging sort of guy. He never erupted at his family no matter how frustrating they got, which is the reason he was frightened by the fire in his belly that exploded and shot through his veins. His vision narrowed and, terrified, he began moving down the hall toward the exit where Dierdre was waiting.
“Hey,” the bartender said. “Have you balanced the books?”
“Tell him yes,” Armand said.
Dierdre was in the alley and Armand was watching her walk. The alley was hot and it smelled of rotten warmed-over leftovers. He joined her in a narrow alcove serving as the entrance to an abandoned office. He knew there would be no more talking.
They kissed once, lightly on the lips, then they pressed hard, teeth clicking while they sustained themselves on each other’s breath. Their heat bonded them. He pushed her off to gain sufficient daylight between them to turn her around. He lifted her hair from her neck. The skin was wet and fragrant. He tasted it. She exhaled harshly. Releasing the hair, he touched her throat, then his fingers were tracing lines, over her collar bones and upper ribs, down the breasts and over the nipples hidden beneath hot damp lycra. He ran along the sensitive channels twitching on either side of her belly. He followed the inguinal line along the hinge of her hips, then he was running up her arms, the puckering pores making the tiny blonde hairs erect. A passerby loaded with shopping bags stopped and watched a moment. Armand saw this and he liked it. In a swift motion, he tugged down the top half of the dress, exposing her breasts. She inhaled rapidly. He touched the new damp flesh, instantly cool and contracting. She responded with a grunt and began rolling up the bottom of the skirt until she had uncovered the whiteness of her bare hips. He needed no help with arousal and when she placed her hands on her knees, he entered her, and was transported beyond his body, a floating vapour.
When they had finished balancing the books, they lingered in the alcove, his hands around her abdomen, she with her buttocks pressed against him, bent over his hands, and making him think of a wet towel on a rack. He found it funny that, from the street, they would appear to be forming the letter “K.” He marvelled at the thought, for a less-than-obvious reason. He couldn’t remember when he had last entertained such a trivial idea as post-coital positions. He tried to stop thinking about it because he was afraid it might break the spell they were under. Relaxing against the wall of the alcove, he pondered whether he was experiencing joy here, for if he was, he hadn’t felt it in a long time.
Armand’s taxi driver cruised by them. The foul woman from the bar was in the back shouting obscenities at Armand, and this time, he found it enchanting, cultural profanity, a souvenir to take home, like a tourist photograph, its recollection one day drawing him to the islands again, the woman’s foul words a pretty drink heavy on the rum.
They found a quiet restaurant on the beach where they ate and drank before reclining at the water’s edge, making love while the sun on the horizon set them ablaze. Afterward, they walked the lantern-lit strand to music playing outside the waterfront restaurants and shops.
In the beginning, they spoke obliquely, taking their time warming up to a direct language which was neither angry nor sad. They talked about their spouses and their kids, how they would inform them their marriages were no longer valid, agreeing that whatever happened afterward would be better than the life they had been enduring every day, year to aching year. They ended up in beach chairs in the sand and after a while, Armand began repeating a quirky little rhyme that made them laugh, their gratification growing with each recitation.
“Pies lead to skies too blue for eyes, and
Skies lead to seas and sand and trees and
Tables and chairs to sit and breathe
The delightfully damp and drifting air.”
