Combing the Beach

Barefoot on your heart
I'll walk to the edge
where your red flows in,

listening in darkness
for any greater darkness
that could be caught
in coughs of wind.

I'll dip my fingers
into the tide and sift
the reeds and sand;

I'll reach down
and stir far below the surface,
dislodge deposits
with my hands.

At every breath
when thunder claps,
adjoined by bolts of brilliant
lightning (you won't hear it,
but in stillness,
it can be felt):
a steady, measured humming—
I will hum in the note
of your name.

And if there is a dawn
where your heart is so still
that my humming outweighs
its beat, if a skiff drifts
and lodges along that divide
where blood washes into
the beach,

I'll blow a kiss—the warm
delicate kind—in the direction
of that slender space

until the shoreline
gives, the driftwood lifts
and a wave washes over
my feet. Until a wave
washes over my feet.

.