National Poetry Month Disasterpiece

 

Love Poem Attempt Number 2: Body Surfing

The current is swift.  The tide is about to shift.  I can feel my body being pushed and pulled.  It’s a clear blue 85 degrees out (which is hot for Newport in July). 


The coolness of the pacific lifts my body up and rushes me to the shore. I want to stay and play in these waves till dusk.

There are dangers here.  Yesterday, a shark warning was issued.  The day before that a golden dog was killed by a swarm of jellies chasing a Frisbee into a wave.  The ocean is not tame.  If a riptide apprehends me I could be swept out into the deep.

The horizon sky looms near, “Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning.” I am the Mediterranean Ocean.  She is the Indian.  I’ve set sail toward Antioch and Byzantium.  Her course was charted for Mt Olympus and the mysterious Orient a few years before.  “Red skies in the evening,” wizened sailors sigh and begin revealing.  About a point, a mythical transformative spot, where all the oceans and bodies of water in our realm meet, churn together to form one sea.

Luna is on the verge of pulling the waters back out.  The lifeguard has issued warnings.  I am bicep high as a big swell approaches.  The current is potent.  I brace myself against the turbulence.  Laughing, I launch myself into the foam.  I am not afraid.