Behind us the city, the ocean below us.
Cold wind combed the headlands; your fingers were cold.
How long the light lasted there, light that at nightfall
moved over the transom of a slowly moving yawl.
We kept its sails in sight, our sight closing in
until, just then, the sun was under. Or then?
Or had I missed the instant, the instant exactly,
when evening crossed into night, when the sea
darkened, becoming as dark as the land had?
It had been like the first trace of joy when we had it,
which now seems so perfect but, then, seemed like now—
low and quotidian, difficult; difficult, low.