Take me 
there, oh, take me there.

To the sea wall 
in Robinson Jeffers country. 
We were like cypress, wind-silhouetted on 
the rocky coast, 
like ships whose green is almost black, 
not like an old man and an old woman, though 
bending away from the wind, like those Monterey 
evergreens. 
I was watching surfers, not black ships. The long 
beach was white and farther down 
the coast was the poet's stone tower. 
Now that I am not on that coastline anymore, 
looking out the window has assumed such importance; 
as if I were in a tower, like Rapunzel, yet 
no length of braid could any longer draw you up.

You, who are never the same person.

I'd like to send a letter to The King of Spain, 
the man who remains constant 
because he is from a fairy tale. 
I want to tell him 
about the Diamond Dog 
who followed my father 
out of my life. How the dog 
runs away every time I call him.
Angela tells me there is a white dwarf star with a core of diamond, 
twenty-five-hundred square miles in diameter. 
It is located in the constellation Centaurus, 
and is fifty light years from Earth. She 
says, "The cosmic gem is the remains of a star that was once 
much like our sun.”

                                                 How lucky 
to have a father who sailed away, rather than one 
who was a disappointment in the flesh. 
There is great drama possible when lies are told, 
for the everyday need not intervene 
its dull self. Living dogs 
slather, smell fuggish, shed hair, jump on 
clean clothes or furniture with muddy paws, lick your 
face, sniff your crotch. But a Diamond Dog 
is a little piece of crystalline motion, 
running like a starship, white on the black beach.

Odysseus, the father, returned after twenty years of sailing, 
had sailor's eyes and saw everything. 
But he would not have recognized 
this Diamond Dog when it greeted his return. "Argos,"
he called it. A premonition?

Oh, take me there, 
take me to the star in the horse-man constellation, 
whose core is miles of diamond. There 
I'd be able to see the "black ships 
drawn up 
on the white beach," 
drawn close to me. I, lingering 
on this seawall; 
they, not furling sails or running away.