A Quiet Night
 
by Susan Isla Tepper 
 
 
Naturally years later
you’d show up
during the full moon—
just as I’m dozing
into dreams, curled 
on the rubber sleep pad
each night rolled out and
pushed into the low tight prow
of Isabelle, humble trawler.
 
Bedtime everything puts to order:
Spiders sucked in the dust-buster,
Isabelle tied up anchored
sur la Seine
tucked in beside a larger sleeker vessel.
Safety in numbers.
 
A quiet night—
water slapping the hull; that’s all.
 
‘Til a ping of pearls
pearls washing through sleep
And I’ve wakened; listening
to this, delicate
intermittent by sheer seconds
hitting the round window in the batten door. 
 
Brushing away what seems a web 
woven along my jaw
I wriggle out,
stand, look through the window
Unprepared.
 
It’s you— all right; there
in the open stern
the balmy—
 
sporting those silly
psychedelic-blue shades 
that I remember, somehow;
you tossing pebbles
from the trucked-in sand.
 
O glorious Paris riverside
resplendent summer season!
 
The glasses smashed to your face
seem to vibrate colors
over you, the water, the deck
Picking up frequencies.
Like mine— like how you found me
 
here, under a light post beamed
high over this water
this boat
where we spent
a stretch of languid nights. 
Please do come out your voice implores.
Wobbly, slightly drunk, loud.
I cannot make a move.
I hardly recall your tone.


* * * * *

"A Quiet Night" was previously published in The Galway Review.

Susan Isla Tepper is the author of eleven published books of fiction and poetry, and three stage plays. Her play The Crooked Heart premiered as a staged-reading at Irish Repertory Theatre on October 25, 2022. Tepper has received numerous awards and honors including 19 Pushcart Prize Nominations, a Pulitzer Nomination for the book version of The Crooked Heart, a winner in the Francis Ford Coppola Novel Contest (2003), and more. Two new novels are forthcoming. Tepper was recently made a Brand Ambassador for The Galway Review, out of Ireland. www.susantepper.com