Pacifica

You moved here when your boyfriend fell ill.
You found that you loved it:

A gray-blue bungalow set back
from sheer sand cliffs

off which paragliders dive
like dandelion seeds;

they drift into the thick-as-chowder fog
that trundles in from the ocean's throat.

I wondered, as you poured me a Coke,
why you were jealous of me --

why you didn't instead pity the doomed, cute
party boy stuck living in the City.

The box of a jigsaw puzzle, still warm from his ghost
sits innocent, childlike, on the coffee table.

You neglect to put on music, and we are lulled
by the water's roar and crying seagulls.

If I were you I would never pull my roots up
from mother Pacific's edge.