A Midsummer Night's Beach

When I was a girl, still on the island I’d sit in the sand and brood and revel in what I thought was utter enlightenment a teenage rebel with dime-store refinement We were all this way, and there is no shame In the unchecked mind of us in our prime The best nights of those When the sea was calm and The moon was out and Blazingly bright, it would light up the night Set the whole ocean glowing Like a deep inky opal Translucent abyss of black Lightly flecked With an iridescent waltz of electric blue, neon purple, alien green, and diamond white It was on these nights That I’d get in the water By some stunning feat of abrasive wave action Or possibly some secret dolphin magic A tide pool would arise A lagoon off the shore Drifting and shifting over the course Of a week, maybe two Drifting out, drifting in Widening out, slimming in Shallow enough to sit in at dawn Submerged to my neck at the day’s final yawn Defiant of the perpetuity of the ocean at large A toy trench off the shore Spanning the length of a whale Sometimes less, sometimes more My own nascent Marianas Never failed to provide An off-shore haven where I could reside These transient channels, clear and serene Cut off from the rest of the sea By a vast steppe of water, ankle deep Separating me in my watery kingdom Where no monstrous creature of the deep could reach Out and out that plain stretched (Only once did I test it) Till that clean sandy bottom would begin its descent Slowly at first, then quickly it went Down to the unknown dark Into a child queen of a tiny sea world, I’d transform Springing up from the bottom of pulverized quartz To shatter the surface between the water and the night Send millions upon millions of droplets of brine Glittering and spinning off into the night I’d leap out my trench, onto that shallow plain Sprint out to the edge of my earth and breathlessly gaze out over the hidden deep Reminded I’m only a guest The ocean is neither mine nor yours to keep Having drunk my fill of humility I’d spin round Fly back Dive back down Into my fleeting empire, my sea of tranquility My throne resumed, I’d splash and play With the smile of the summer Milky Way Shooting out of the ocean, slicing the southern sky The universe itself keeping a loving and watchful eye As the earth showed me exactly who she was No pretense I’d dig my fingers into the satiny sand And feel its realness Every cell of my skin feeling the water rush across As I coasted, submerged, along the bottom and lost Myself from the rest of mankind Then I’d rest my head back on that broad sandy mesa Gaze up at my friends Scorpius, Aquarius, and Cassieopiea Small ripples of water lapping at my temples Barring defense of Descartes’ deceiving God Not a thing in all the world could ever make me doubt That every sensation that I felt in those days Was a whisper from the cosmos telling me about The ways to be and The ways to see and All the states of mind that reveal What is good, and true, and right, and real