The last train left for Madrid six minutes before
my broken attempts at words had failed.  Common sense
says that language, when foreign, can sound so unreal,
and obrigado never sank in as the right
word for thank you.  As my harsh mouth spoke to the tide
in my tongue – goodbyes – far off a train whistle blew

like a snide indication that maybe this blue
would be the last color I’d recognize as fore-
ground.  And when I missed the train, I swore at the tide
in the few words I knew.  Did it make any sense
to shell out eight Euros for sleep, when shells slept right
at my two feet?  A fisherman clicked in his reel,

struggled with demons and what looked to be a real,
big fish.  If he had faith in the brash winds that blew
whoppers from mute ocean floors, inspired them right
to the surface for lunch, then I could believe for
one night that my guts were, in fact, golden – nonsense
persuades like a desperate woman’s mind.  I tied

my supplies to misplanned piers, too far from the tide
to have ever touched water, and crafted as real
a bed as sheets and towels allowed.  I sensed
my fear in fitful, sandy sleep and dreamed of blue
shadows skittering on benches too near.  And four
times I woke, hands strangling air, like captors were writ-

ing my ransom notes.  I labeled that night my Rite
of the Traveler, when after eight hours, I untied
my pack, thought better of light.  Obrigado for
once hit my lips before thanks, and the ocean reeled
back a de nada of crashes and sprays – the blues
of the sea’s musical language.  Safe in the sense

that I was alive, I laughed that for stingy cents,
a rare sterile hostel beamed vacancia right
down and around the corner.  But that night the blue
midnight sky forgave my solitude and untied
my foreign tongue.  Flopping for breath, my fear reeled
like the fisherman’s catch – it teased, tasting sweet for

its scent of death.  Fortified, I ebbed like the tide
right as the train came in.  I felt almost as real
as blue in my veins, the sea, the one I looked for.