Walking on the Beach in a Windstorm

I feel

that I’m walking across

the end of the world-

this place,

where crabs caught unprepared

scurry and dive

and look for holes in the seamless landscape

where my footprints are gone

just seconds behind me.

They tuck their eyes

and wish to become stone.

The sand

becomes a stinging

ghost-mist-

a fast fog, snarling and cutting and biting.  Sand

is not one color, no-

it is deep blacks and browns,

reds and yellows of the richest texture,

white as bone.

The colors that lack are found in sea grass,

pebbles and shell:

purple, blue, here an orange.

And never

never,

do the colors stay.

Even the ocean,

sickly gray and churning,

bilge brown where the shorebreak twists up the shallow seabed

in a moment of sun is suddenly

breathtaking green and

shimmering blue and silver.

Then all becomes thunderous white

as water

soaks to earth

turns to air

as bits of sea foam

break from the mass and roll-

like living things

like the crabs

like shooting stars-

until they become something else.

This,

all this is roaring,

screaming at me-

pleading, “don’t you see?”

The lines we draw, so convenient,

(this is water, this is sand, this is color, this is man,

the stars,

the crab that wishes to be stone),

so blurred in this place

at the end of the world

(don’t you see?)