Sea Karma

The beach has its own tide

of chairs and towels and coolers,

radios, sunglasses, umbrellas,

cell phones, paperback novels,

et cetera.

*

Waxing every morning,

waning by afternoon,

accompanied as always

by a fugue of conversations,

the rise and fall of sandcastles.

*

As it so happens the sea

is so cold today

that the yang of humanity

is perfectly balanced

by the yin of blue.

*

I want to swim out to the place

where water and sky meet.

I think it would be blank the way

a page can be blank

the way the mind must feel

*

when it reaches the edge

of meditation — the place

where all thought stops.

But the tide pulls both ways

and at the moment my daughter

*

wants to know where the moon

goes when it isn’t round.

I explain how it’s always there

right where you’d expect it to be

safe in night’s pocket

in an absence of light.

*

-0riginally published in Calyx