« Simon Perchik » Ancient boats have always wept and the sea given a leaf, rows as if some tree is still tracing the shoreline, waves lifted higher, higher, till dead. Everywhere and the young girl on the swing is kissing someone --her eyes are closed but you will open them, the way every shore comes by sea leaves by sea --you will hold her breath and in each hand the water warms, is lifted over your head over the Earth and every wave keeping count how even the light pulls back, beating the air thinner and thinner till even her leaving will disappear and in this darkness the morning you listen for, still hear it. is coming. All afternoon these mountains, airborne --from each cloud its fruit ripens only on the run :rain is never harvested --I let fall an orange then mist :the crop sweeter than how many times do I send this knife alone, each half cut in half till nothing's left except the cut and the swelling --there's room for you now and where there were wings my arms moving chairs that weigh more than wagons. What rain I eat comes from my finger as armies are still escorted by mountains flying in formation and nothing underneath but this orange this half brother, half sister, head down --there's still room, the healing bigger than ever, returning from a pasture and covered with wet grass. Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, Thick With Conviction and elsewhere. Family of Man (Pavement Saw Press) and Rafts (Parsifal Editions) are scheduled for publication 2007. Readers interested in more are invited to read his essay Magic, Illusion and Other Realities at www.geocities.com/simonthepoet which site lists a complete bibliography.