Page 80 of Wayfarers

and tie up my hair and put sunscreen everywhere

I can reach, protecting myself as best I can

from the thing that’s beating down on me.

Knox New to Me

I’m no stranger to communion with great bodies

of water. I’ve fought for balance

while learning to surf in the numbing cold

churn of the Pacific off Coronado.

I’ve napped in the sand at Okracoke

on the lip of the shipwreck-haunted

and bone-strewn Atlantic coast, where

Blackbeard hid his treasure.

I’ve waded in the summer-warm shallows

of the Gulf of Mexico, tasted its salt

like a cut lip.

Watched a pod of orcas spout

gray mist against the mist-gray clouds

at San Juan Island. Water below them;

water falling from above.

What’s new to me is being

at a place of endless sky

and endless water with someone

I wish I could touch

slowly and gently, the way tides lap up

on a shore, someone who makes me

wish time was endless too.

Knox

“Do you need to change?” Sylvie asks as she exits the van, the beachy ersatz coconut of sunscreen wafting around her.

“In many different ways, I’m sure,” I say.

“I mean clothes.”