For Rebecca Moorman
Bruised by too much purple
sunshine and the high coastal wind,
my forehead blunt as a thumb,
I fall asleep on ribbed sand,
salt-whitened pines crouched above me.
Didn’t want to swim at first too cold,
friends pulled me sputtering under waves.
When I resurfaced I could not stop blinking,
the sun in my eye like a silver nail.
Hours we splashed away, kicking fans of water
in the face of the moon, touching starfish,
letting sea anemones close around our fingers.
Rebecca, round as a stone and just as rough,
floated naked in a pool, heavy breasts swaying,
a translucent crab leg washing up against her back,
“Life may have begun in tidal pools like these,” she says.
“Life ends here too. Listen to the rush of the ocean
pulling the world back into herself one grain at a time.”
Soothed by the hush of waves,
senseless as sand, matter only,
I sleep like driftwood. How peaceful
to come apart with bits of crab and shell.
