Let’s be here, birth-
stone. Just for tonight.
Our bodies compress
the sand into hot coals,
and all this promised light
jumps down from the sky
inside a toothy wave.
Becomes soft and kelp.
Soft and muffled
by the direction of itself.
I don’t know where it’s going,
but right now I’ve got you
coming into the milieu
from a thousand directions,
and your faces imitate my eyes
like this ocean pretends
to be a bigger, wider moon.
When we realize this,
I don’t recognize you.
You’re my brown face,
tasty face, looking through
the early sea mist and into
the jaws of a gull that is slicing
across the derelict shore,
as though he knows it
can’t be ruined anymore.
Dark gem. Blue skin.
What are we doing now?
You brought me to open my eyes,
my eyes to open the insect shells
scattered around the beach
like shiny nuggets.
But I’ve been looking through
the oil spill, spilling over
the rickety, rocky dock,
and I can’t tell one black shell
from one black eye, black rock.
Bayleigh Fraser, USA
The Social Poet 