Spring Break Vii - Ocean Flowers
The former blond model pouts and primps
Swinging her hips
Down the splashing catwalk of shoreline
Sand caving to her imagined heels
Wheeling to her awaiting Israeli mogul
Her shoulders set so far back
It’s as if she’s walking backwards
Puts herself square
Between
Him
And another thin woman
Launches a laugh and offers salted peaches
Wraps her skinny arm around
The other woman’s string bikini of waist
Holds her tight
Upright
You don’t have to go away
She seems to be signaling
And a young Salvadoran girl
Is curled up at the side of the tide
Beached to that surf-beaten sandpaper
Only a towel of brown skin beneath her
People stepping over her
Looking
Shrugging
Walking on
She is homeless of any self-absorption
No cell phone bag or jewelry
An unclaimed seashell
Another time
Her brown round body
Was plopped down wet and sticky
To mounds of dry hot sand
Hands stretched above her head
Handcuffed to the sun
And when she finally stirred and stood
She squeezed her boobs like sponges
And the grains of sand crumbled from her body
Like Cinderella’s gown
Shaken loose and fallen to her ankles.
The crashing waves
Humiliate a man with a beach ball belly
Rolls him to shore
Legs tossed over his head
And also, though much more kindly,
Scoots a little boy at his butt
Back to his worried mother
Who’s holding a towel
Yelling from shore at arm’s length
Her worst fear.
I mean her husband.
Muslim women are wrapped in black
From toe to throat
As they swim and laugh in the ocean
And that’s ok too
For I smile at one beauty
As she emerges
And pulls uncomfortably
At her taut and soaked nylon dressing
She sees me watching her
And since it was not for the usual reasons
Her lips part
As she unleashes a smile across her face
Un-shy.
Yes, we’re friends.
How would these subjects describe me
If they were also voyeur poets?
They would not
I am certain of that
Being invisible
And old
Fashioned
Pen in hand
Reading a novel.
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