Perhaps it was the distance from home turf
that softened me, perhaps the spanking blue
of sky that pried me open, pounding surf,
eroding wind that turned ideas askew,
but I was struck by tender gesture, seen
outside a small cafe: a woman took
her partner’s arm while glancing love between
them – gentle longing in an upward look.

They neither cared I saw nor what I thought.
I cherished my own loneliness the while
I watched, and didn’t learn till later on how wracked
she was, behaving like her mother taught:
with awful admiration, wiggle, smile,
when he was breaking up with her, in fact.