Before the Sea Broke
       

If I looked long enough the reachings
of beach and sea each became the other, opening
an uncertainty, which was the horizon,
an innocence of joinings.
The sea I knew wasn't the emerald
some painters made; it was steel or naval
blue, or medium blue in sun, a child's crayon,
mine, on red-bucket and sand-glint day.
It cast off scraps: beads, feathers, scales,
and threw capes or stoles:
white-fledged, they could grow into gulls.
At the delta, the river groveled
a shoal, unloading stones.
It milled and rounded their corners,
made eggs, loaves, wedges. The jewels—
the blue, green, and brown glass shards—
it wore and mulled the sharp out of.

The sea broke anyway
where it flexed asterisks and sparks
and the waves reached
for beseech or implore before I did,
when it shifted,
seeking balance, and rose
and embraced the coastal
restaurants, the bars and cereal-box hotels,
which became underwater
megaliths and grottos the merciful
sand filled.

Maybe the continent's end
will begin again now—
new girls, tidepools,
buckets, beaches—and in the coves,
herons perch in the cypress,
their white necks queries,
keen against the dark teal,
discordant yet clarifying.

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Copyright © 2022 Mary B. Moore All rights reserved
from Dear If
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission