We sit on the porch at supper, so homesick for the Atlantic, we cast, catch, reel it west— a thousand miles across 17, 95, and 20; across the Pee Dee, Mississippi, and Red—
till sure enough, it smacks and thrashes right over Shreveport, LA. Comes to rest with the tide-swell of cicadas, the hushbaby waves of wind through heavy-leafed oaks outside these old screens.
When they weep, the hawks turn into gulls. Orange cannas break into flame— tiki-torches from the 1960s, back when our tans were deep, bodies lean, feet sore from that trek on the shell-sharp waterline from Huntington Beach to Litchfield and, when the moon drank the tide down, across to Pawleys Island. . . .
Sting of lemon on grilled trout, crisp burnt skin. Just as we used to, we cut the salt with gin.