Marsala

in the photo the street leads to a salt garden
beyond the tide where noon is hazy and light
held by water in the plains – torrefied
under tiled roofs the blades of the mill dive in the wind
a netherlanding of the sky the entire sea for rent
dammed brackish drained and brought into shallow
pools it then sediments as salband
silently in the mining of the saltworks: clinkers
of sun under the solidifying brine – the wind drags them up
to the blackrush glaring ridge after ridge and becoming light
blazing the sea – and there your shadowed face – pine-tree crowns
blurry in the foreground of a fading port town
seaswallows in the terraces – where I can only guess at
your expression and what in it was conflicted