Untitled, After Edward Hopper’s “Rooms by the Sea”

Of a front door flung open,
beyond the step is simple, open
sea. The light is milky.
Stirred by the wind with each
nearing current.

You know that familiar
mirroring: the bright echo
of glint and glimmer
bouncing off blue seawater.
But it’s better than that.

This light is a blinding
afterthought, the sun’s
consideration reflected as a favor.
The sea laps steadily
at the doorstep.
An eager dog.

Waves froth and curl,
tugging landward at the broad hem
of the sea’s golden skirt.
Her knees are pressed with sea oats
from kneeling so long.

Our floating house is getting full
of heavy light. A vase of sea holly
tumbles with the swell and unswell
of waves. The broken buds, like
little purple snowflakes, melt
into blinding white or crawl
like sea spiders
back into the ocean.

Two rooms by Edward Hopper, and some complaining

I wish things still seemed as limitless as they did not so long ago. The reality of my life continuing for the next seven months just as it has been since the beginning of May (barely employed, in touch with a total of two people in this city, without school or any kind of schedule or structure) is a totally new and suffocating prospect. I've never been less excited about existing. It's not that I'm sad, just claustrophobic and really, truly bored.

From a distance, summer always seems like this huge block of free time during which I will regenerate and become the person I'm too busy to be when I have school and work all the time. I will be well-read, I will write all the time, I will finish the projects I've been meaning to finish and write those stupid thank-you notes to the people who sent me graduation cards. I have done almost none of the above in the past three or so weeks. Summer is just too wide open with too many prospects and I am turning into a big, lazy idiot. I pick up a book and get through ten pages until I decide to take a nap. I spend most of my day on the internet. I guess I've been doing okay with writing pretty regularly, though. Good old Ed Hopper has been a main source of inspiration lately.