the ocean has never made more sense
than it does now as we walk barefoot
over the wet, hard-packed sand. the
waves roll in and slide out like breathing,
high tide deep breath low tide sigh,
exasperation, admission of all the dead
things that lie between our sandcastle
and the sandbar: sunken fish skeletons,
shells silted over. this place where
children laugh by day seems a graveyard
at dusk, but there’s life beneath these rows
of footprint headstones, as dying is an act of
the living. this sand dollar is cold and hard
but will look lovely on the shelf beside
pictures of you in the surf, is like mothers
and fathers, still and cracked and gray.
while we, like starfish, lose our arms, legs,
and head, crawl away from severed limbs,
and grow anew as the tide comes in.
