Walking, and the wind skimming
swallow-low at my ankles
peeled away the smoking sand.
Furled in gusts of mineral light
like braided, cat-stroked grass
it played around my feet
in currents of palest bone, a ghost sea
through whose lures I waded
to a parched, hair-thin tune.
The surf soughed as the beach
streamed out of its body
just ahead of each step
leaving a swept floor gilded
with the barest chime of grains.
Almost-words, whose powdery,
moth wing script lifted
singing seaward as I followed
their ephemeral drift,
a palimpsest inked and erased
under the salt air’s aurora.