Spring 2022, Volume 32

Poetry by David O’Connell

Watching My Wife Parasail

From shore it seems the ocean’s eager everywhere
for sun. I can almost hear the wavelets bark
as they crowd and nip the boat’s stern where she waits.
Even with binoculars, I can’t determine if it’s joy
or apprehension Julie’s feeling as the engine chumbles
like a smoker’s cough, then whines up to speed
and the sail, directed by the tow line’s arrow, rises
like some impossible jellyfish, bioluminescent,
drawing stares and gestures all along the beachfront.
Look! As if caught in its tentacles, she dangles, bare legs
kicking as she’s hauled above the boat masts, above
the decommissioned lighthouse set like a Saturn rocket
on the farthest spit of sand. Higher than the wheeling gulls,
she finds the apex, and I realize, suddenly, this too
is something I want, and that I want so much already,
as they slowly winch her in, and the world goes still,
and I wave; I wave and clap this stranger back to earth.  

 

 

 

BIO: David O’Connell's work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, New Ohio Review, Copper Nickel, Southern Poetry Review, and North American Review, among other journals. His first full-length collection, Our Best Defense, is forthcoming from Cervená Barva Press.