Night On the Beach

A mottled crab scuppers its sea legs in fluorescent foam. Blue pods rattle on green tides. Bladder wrack, Mermaid’s Hair washing tangled ankles. There are voices in my open mouth, they roll over a briny tongue, intone words from the breath of spray and brume. Where the sky hangs, gull beaks open to scoop the bones of a shoaling surf. Mother, father, stranger, we are all here speaking through a whirlpool’s gullet, yet who has gone ahead of us to express this sea-glow? What surfaces at the edge of our own shores?