BREAKERS AT MARCONI BEACH, CAPE COD

            —to Bob Power

On my walk, I stop to examine the patterns
the breakers make as each wave swishes
to its peak and then retreats, leaving an arc
of sand behind at the high point of its penetration,
a retreating wave often counteracting

an incoming so that the maximum assault
of the most recent isn’t as high as the previous.
The crests at the full reach of the rollers
have formed a mountain range against
a sandy horizon, a mathematician’s delight

in fractal behavior, and a dynamic piece of art
as subsequent crashers deposit yet higher
outlines of a further range, the rising tide
altering the painting right in front of your eyes.
An older couple stands barefoot just above

the deepest incursion, as if they’ve been
commanding the ocean’s performance all along,
still in the same spot when I return a half-hour later,
likely as mesmerized as I am by both the sound
and sight of the sea attacking the shore.

Who can blame them for staying put, even
as the dunes’ shadows engulf them? At their age,
they’ve earned an afternoon of expecting
nothing more than to be entranced by a spectacle
that will still exist long after they are gone.

CONFESSIONS OF A DUAL CITIZEN

What made it natural to become naturalized
was that there were no dueling perspectives
on virtually anything, except perhaps a little
spelling, the key word honour shortening to
honor as I became a dual citizen living apart
from my country of birth. These days, the two

sides of me duel not each other, but a common
foe, and, as for that famous battle of 1759
on the Plains of Abraham that are now part
of the capital city of the province in which I
was raised, there are sheer cliffs to be scaled,
yet unlike then, no cover of darkness, only

a deepening nightmare. Victory might require
death on the battlefield as befell General Wolfe,
or we might end up thinking as defeated
General Montcalm on his deathbed that he
was glad he’d never see the day. I truly pray
that Canada never falls, becomes the fifty-first.

RUDBECKIA, GENUS ASTERACEAE

When you pick a bunch of cone flowers and put them
in a blue vase on a mahogany desk, their full yellow
petals hanging in submission to the black center,
you might think of famous artists and their works,
of where to place an affordable replica
on your living room wall to announce to guests
your consummate knowledge and taste, but to me,

the art is in observing the slow-motion cinema
of their aging as the water in the vase evaporates,
the petals shrink and twist, those withering flowers
multi-armed figure skaters or ballerinas twirling,
a complementary beauty in the demise of a previously
perfect thing. You only hope that someone dear to you
sees that in you as you make your way to the end.

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Jim Tilley has published four full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. Billy Collins selected his poem, On the Art of Patience, to win Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Poetry. Five of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, was published in June 2024.

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