The Poetry Corner

Night Fishing At Antibes

By Paul Cameron Brown

A beach back of bric brac, wine goblet of sky ... . the horizon beginning somewhere between Nod & nigh unto forever with only the sigh of a Casuarina pine or sea-grape to force a smile. It was entering into twilight - our minds were sailing ships, mere vagaries upon the waves, mine more a clippership on the Frisco to China run. Soire intime, aprtif, digestif? A bottle of rum with Eleuthera for a name - the prettiest coves have steadfast winds dark about portside. Silvery light of stars, the stars like black hansom cabs with livried footmen before shark-toothed clouds, a shark-faced moon, the sight of a shark breaking water, lemon-white its gullet with the Big Dipper stuck in a shark tooth. Diamondhead or Copperback? Carpetbaggers ... the moon's silver tea-set giving birth to wonderment flooding in affection a Raouel Dufy lithograph, some decrepit Neapolitan fisherman zoning his epic life to human proportions.