The clean white chairs
on the clean white porches
are lined up and alert,
honing their view of the
stacks at Northport
and the Stony Brook hospital
on Long Island Sound.
From ten miles out, these
and other large structures
look like toys: children’s blocks
Lego towers, mint-green balloons
and peppermint sticks
that mark the way
to safe harbors.
They say vacations by the water
are for broadening one’s perspective,
but they’re also for focusing a
narrower view — snapshots of targets,
waypoints to be studied, later,
when the storms have passed
and birds rock gently on the waves.