“And Because I Cannot Think In It" by Brian Baise
Published 1995, The Nassau Literary Review
As the gulls layer low on the water, the sun textures the evening and I can think only of the first time we rode these swells. You were too young to stand for too long, and I pushed you on your stomach towards shore so I could turn and watch the ocean trade purple for black, and the lights pale on the palisades. There are no more summers like that where mornings came easy and the porpoises were never too close. Now, the morning stings because it does not give me time to remember that, and because I fear forgetting what I knew before I slept, and because I always do. Point Dume, Secrets, Charthouse, Boneyards: I can see them all from here —their winds offshore, and the mollusks on the jetty. You wrote that it was clear past the Channel Islands today, and that it has been that way for some time; but those years are indistinct as you are now, facing the same wake and cooling westerlies that flutter your suit against your breasts. The water is finally warmer than the air; the spume miasma from the breakers is luminous as are our towels on the dark sand, and our ivory fingers in the night water.“October's poem of the month ‘And Because I Cannot Think In It’ by Brian Baise '95 explores the interplay between sense and memory. The opening image of a sunset above the water spurs the narrator to return his attention to past experiences that he, despite his best efforts, cannot remember in his daily life. As summer fades away and we settle into the fall semester here at Princeton, this poem might well remind us to nonetheless hold onto those meaningful fleeting moments while we can.” – James Sowerby, Historian