How could the sand
be so big?
The wind so raw?
The green blue leather of the grass
so tough?
Everything superlative!
So hard,
so soft,
so expansive,
it makes me tall and short.
I wheezed in the crypts of dunes,
the fluff of foam,
the granules of sand
shining like quartz,
the waves like whales
with white undersides
dissolving in smokeless dream.
The solitude of the shore,
the dim green of the forest
held at bay,
like a necklace of emerald,
a blade of grass,
thin as a razor.
Only the sky could make friends
with this ocean,
find a peer.
Myself,
a dot of gray,
of human hope.
It was my first meeting
with the Pacific,
queen of oceans,
of mermaid and dolphin.
I could live there like the crab
and discarded shell,
like a rock
smoothed to glass
in the beating surf,
and find my soul,
the ceiling of vastness
looking down in a Sistine arc
before the threshold of infinity.