Adam

Now and again, I glimpsed that openness -

The combers rolling in, on Lagos beach,

Off the south Atlantic, where a single

diplomat

From the Old World, in Panama hat

And linen jacket, broke the dazzling reach

Of sand unto infinity. Second-guessed,

Too late now to be Adam, I undressed

At the rainbow's end of Songkla, Ko Samet,

Abandoned military towns and emptied zones

Of refugee litter. History had passed,

The beaches beckoned, sea and sky were blue -

But dive as I might, there was no way through

To the first innocence, to the great unknown.