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Holiday with Ernesto

The Day of Rain

Four or five nights into the Beach Week I adore
the day of rain. It balms the salted sunburn,
soothes the belly rubbed raw by a sandy surfboard.
Rain perfects the surf, glassing it off like the river
polishes rocks, after first turning the sea surface
to the world’s shivering skin, surfers on it like mites,
micro enough to see each pore, each goose pimple.
I suppose I like the way rain altogether dissolves
obligation to make the most of the pricey location.
One is freed to shack up with the hack’s paperback,
to idle on the glider as the sky’s porch-paint-gray
fissures with downstriking lightning. One does
things on the rainy day one otherwise would shun:
air hockey in the arcade on the rickety fishing pier,
the Alligator Garden at the causeway’s nether end,
a noon run on the luxuriously empty slant of sand,
the absurd, sad end-of-summer swimwear sale,
lunchtime tequila in the louche local poolroom,
and thence to ensemble siesta, drifting in and out
with the wind as it sings in the cedar-shake sides
of the old hotel, which itself seems to breathe.

posted by Kalkaino @ 3:05 PM