They lie on beaches and are proud to tan— climb banks in search of flowers for their hair, change colors like chameleons and seem indolent and somehow flat and sad. Search out the trees for love, the beach umbrellas, the bar, the dining room, flash as they walk, are pretty-mouthed and careful as they talk; send picture postcards to their offices brittle with ink and soft with daily phrases. Find Sunday empty without churches, loll not yet unwound in deck chair and by pool, cannot do nothing neatly, while in lap, periscope ready, scan the scene for love. Under the near leaves or the sailing water eyes hoist flags— while handkerchiefs, between the breasts, alive, flutter like pallid bats at the least eddy. Dread the return which magnifies the want— wind in high places soaring round the heart and carried like a starfish in a pail though dunes and fields and lonely mountain paths. But memory, which is thinner than the senses, is only a wave in grass that the kiss erases. And love, once found, their metabolism changes: the kiss is worn like a badge upon the mouth, pinned there in darkness, emphasized in daylight. Now all the scene is flying. Before the face people and trees are swift; the enormous pool brims like a crying eye. The immediate flesh is real and night no curtain. There, together, the swift exchange of badges accelerates to a personal prize-giving while pulse and leaf rustle and grow climactic.
Vacationists, by P.K. Page (August 1944)
Seemed like an accurate time to share these verses, eh?
