The Pier
Facing an inevitable discovery, and farewell
I didn’t know just how small
your red blanket was,
home was too easy,
and more easily convinced,
your prettier words,
pure of my secular English,
defense working late shifts,
in what was Calexico for miles,
there is a warm embrace,
stretching miles inwards,
what’s that floating thing
outside of our hermitage?
the distance that excites you,
it measures me up,
I retreat to our sandy pages,
admiring once-shared fixation,
I’ve painted impressionistic
desert landscapes,
then you caught some truth,
in the sea breeze,
helpless as my senses return
to me from the pier,
I’m in disbelief at this fleeting
treasure from the water’s edge,
reaching for my only keepsake,
caught in the farewell of my
little world floating away,
slowly turning to face west.
This is the third poem, “THE PIER,” of my eleventh poetry collection, IN TW*NTY. This poem comes from the perspective of a protective parent; a parent trying to protect their child from the world's true nature. This is why the parent tries their very hardest to convince the child that the sand which they stand upon is a desert, and leads to no ocean. When the child finally catches a salt whiff from out the window, then and there, their departure to the sea is sewn between holes in the darkly visible lid of this jar.
— Chicano poet from Southern California
