On shell collecting
If yellow could be blue, it would set the sea on fire
With burning, burrowing, brightness until
All that remained was the soul—not the sand—
And growing within it: the seeds of a trunk and
Leaves bursting aqua-veined—blue
Golden sand remembers footprints. Some
Still remain from past meanderings of
Bending silhouettes gathering—collecting rather—
Butterfly-corpses of fleshy feet, those
The sea spits out from its rhythmic shore.
But if yellow could be blue and the light on the bay could
Drown out the freshness of the air,
Then it might suffocate the shadow of fingered fronds
And leave this barren divide between air and water
The mere edge of a broad funeral.
With yellow might come orange, pink, red…
Tumbling formless, collapsing into grains:
All butterfly corpses, all tragedies of the tide,
Which greedy hands hoard for beauty;
Simplicity in ridges, furrows, age rings.
‘So beautiful’ they call the bones of broken mermaids,
The sea-grazed, sanded grains of what was life. Limp-sprawled
Burning in the sunlight; if only yellow could be blue.
On land the dead are weighted below soil,
But from the water they rise to the surface.
ECW Poetry 