Day at the Beach

Floating on your back,
Rippling turquoise silk caresses
Your ears
Your fingertips
The backs of your knees, tickling
As your salt-touched eyes tingle
Not unpleasantly.
Face glowing warmly through transparent
Sunscreen.
You hear the ocean’s rumbling breath
And match yours to it,
Inhaling the sky, blue as the back
Of a dragonfly’s wing
And shimmering with sun.
Close your eyes and watch the shifting
Color behind your eyelids.
The in and out of the waves
And your breathing.

Exhale (the tide creeps up delicately)
Inhale (slides back toward the horizon, spinning sand)

Something brushes the back of your knee.
Not the tickle of silk
But a stroke of sandpaper,
Rough
Gentle
And surprising.

Exhale (a crab scuttles in the damp sand
at the surf’s edge)
Inhale (laughing children on the beach, chasing
the tide’s whispering retreat)

A sharp pain in your calf,
Probably a cramp. The result
Of dehydration.
You kick and discover
A responding tug, soft at first
Then powerful,
Insistent.
Unbalanced, you blink back salt
And notice silent crimson spreading
Around you swirlingly.
Pink foam.

Exhale (clouds drifting lazily)
Inhale (the familiar scent of sunscreen)

You open your mouth,
Perhaps to scream with your salt-stung throat
But coppery blood-water rushes in
Drowning your voice.
Then you squint
Through the rosy mist
And glimpse a row of white teeth
Flashing like sun-struck glaciers.
The water a field of poppies
In the spring. Red, vibrant, full of life.
Your life.
A round black eye focuses on you
Unblinking, flat
And uncompromising as the sandpaper skin,
Snowy teeth.

Exhale (a violet satin shell)
Inhale (foam dissolving into sand)

You don’t kick
Pull, or
Twist in the deepening color,
No turquoise left.
Instead you sink
Quietly
Drawn by that dark eye,
Trailing beautiful, perfectly formed scarlet bubbles.
Cold blue silence wraps around you.
Above, the sun splashes iridescent
Onto wave crests
Sand grains
Beach umbrellas laughing
With color.