“By God, I wish I had that Hemingway here right now!
I’d knock him out with a single punch!”
— Wallace Stevens (Key West, 1935)

Rain all evening—satin rain upon the shore,
rain on lantern-glass, the loosened tie:
the palms keep time. Your daughter loosed my
boastful words to you, which opened like a door
to crosswinds, shaking now the sycamore,
hat brims folding, spectacles awry—
a seaman’s moon brimming in your salted eye,
and every puddle widened to a floor
of shining risk. We closed—not quite embrace,
not yet refusal—angling into mud
that took the crease from linen, name from face,
and made one sentence of our breath and blood.
You laughed, then hauled me up. Rain stitched the rove
of night back whole. I drank—and learned to love.