Jaws Just Turned Fifty

The salty wind tans my face, smile for miles of shoreline. My feet ecstatic to dip and go into the ebb and flow. I didn’t know it then, how time flies; so glad, so free, so liberating. Just a child running into Melbourne arms. She’s nine, this person I remember. I only remember pure happiness. It is addressed E V E R Y time I hear the swoosh, feel hot sun, smell the coconut air. N E V E R afraid of sharks, my cousins, lovingly warned me of. I couldn’t have cared less. All the foamy joy of the tides lifting me higher and higher into ecstasy. Dance of fluidity. Later, I’d watch Jaws, but not for another five years…fearless, collecting shells; Auntie Elaine still living, telling me to glue onto velvet Florida F O R E V E R keepsakes. My granddaughters, would move and swim in this space, I occupied so many years before. I stand knee deep, sandals kicked off, while my daughter, and hers, wait at the car. You couldn’t keep me from this cherry picked memory. The beachy wind in my face. Miles and miles of shoreline. Coconut and salt, swooshing of ebb and flow. Jaws just turned fifty and I’m still riding the highs of possibilities.