Holidays  

How great it feels

to take a rest from yourself,

to slip out of your skin,

out from under your haircut,

out of your time-worn name.

To perceive your own shadow

as a stranger with a straw hat

and overshort pants.

When some ambition or other

makes its way to the surface

of the hot day, it submerges

like the little boat being lowered by

two boys into the bay’s shallows.

On the neighbouring deck chair

crosswords in a language unknown

to you are being solved.

Across: summer in

the dialect of the sea.

You are an empty square

waiting for its letter.

Down: please

print lightly.