This was in The Dark Horse, back around the time of the Punic Wars.
A Gloucester Love Song
She is, she says, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter,
and though she left the life her father chose,
it’s wind and rocks and ocean that she knows.
And so she sits and croons, and eyes the water,
then land, then back to sea, as if she sought her
place again; and blinks a smile that glows,
then fades. In here I’m called Four Roses Rose.
The second time around the smile is tauter.
She’s here, at Lobster Tom’s, most afternoons,
one hand around a glass, the thumbnail black.
We share a window booth, where she can see
the sea past rusted packing shacks, the ruins
of docks, the fishing tubs now gone to wrack,
and soon she’ll sing the songs she’s saved for me.
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