trout

Penelope waits

Diana Bridge

When she is alone she listens, as children listen,
to a conch. The scoop of its body, a shining nude
stowed in her palm and held up to one ear.

Stored in its hold, the wayward flare of character,
the crash-back of the plot. But she goes down below
the ebb and flow of action to the ur-narrative

she craves. Intent as on the clue to her own pulse,
she tracks the mechanism of return that runs,
a pledge of constancy, in the cool blood of waves.