your eyes are blue.
as blue as the rest of you,
ranting and raging and throwing your wave arms up in the air with every
gust of teasing wind.
you told me once
green was your favorite color.
i doubt it.
it's not just one blue.
but layers.
almost black-blue, like sleeping heavens
and then the cerulean lighter Caribbean pools,
streaked with the almost white of ripped denim and
the deceptive brownish of sea foam.
your waves are uneven,
and they ripple across the surface of the sand like your skin
ripples across you
the dips and curves making tide pools
for crabs and sea anemones to take refuge.
most people don't like you
"too chilly. can't swim there.
and there's too much wind and rain."
i like you. that's my kind
of weather - messy and dirty and sad and yet simple
with only sand and water to get in the way of itself - the way you let the mist
lounge about,
sauntering from tree to tree, street to street,
storefront to storefront,
enveloping, muffling the distant song of water's heartbeat,
and it makes my jacket and jeans damp with its heaviness.
when i walk down to your shore you throw wind at me
thinking i'll walk back to the house for warmer shoes and some hot chocolate.
but that's the thing
you don't know me.
i'm a mountain girl.
mountain girls climb mountains just to find wind that carries new scent.
i face that wind,
and i let the water make my feet go numb,
it's iciness is threatening but
i'm not afraid of you.
beach length waves shove against each other,
racing to reach my ankles
a bet against time
a wager for the pretty lady.
i think of what the jovial nature hides -
harshness and honesty.
chasms.
doldrums.
hurricanes.
shelter to the water beasts
raging against the coasts.
the way you never stop -
you're a constant of wave, water, depth, shallows,
somehow you cover every aspect and the sheer
immensity makes me feel small.
i think of
the way man has wanted to tame you
and yet you have remained just as dangerous as before
they tied some sticks together and tried
to cross you.
"we'll win the pretty lady,
pretty lady come home in our tub"
but you pulled them down in maelstrom and reef
sent an extra breath of wind to make the waves psychotic
carved graves out of the feasting table
that sharks so often watch.
and yet how like man you are,
those long waves equalling strong shoulders,
bringing the wind and blocking it at the same time,
gritty hands pulling at my feet, digging sand around,
kissing locks of my hair, mingling my blonde strands with your sandy ones,
light and bleached from salt and sun
and then kissing my lips with
your salty ones. scratching
my check with the bit of stubble, grit at the top of
your cheekbone, sharp.
i can't tell if it's a scar that's yet to heal from
the tiff with that shark last week
or if it's because you never shave when
you're supposed to.
you leave gifts on the shoreline:
seaweed, driftwood, pretty stones and shells
and even the occasional sea star or jelly fish.
some days you bring me sea foam in your hands, but
it spills over, all over the bland sand and makes me laugh
when it flies in your face.
the perpetual lullaby,
murmuring sweet things in a language i do not understand,
shhshh shhshh,
others say be careful.
that you're dangerous.
that i shouldn't swim too deep.
you'll pull me away from them.
i think of our differences.
me climbing heights and you diving depths.
both breathing oxygen but yours is in water and mine is in air
and i imagine your sandy hands pulling at my feet again,
deeper, love, deeper, let me show you something beautiful.
and how you love to tease the seagulls.
i think of how you send me sunsets and
i think of the way i found the mountain looking at the stream instead of at me
and i think of how i'm tired of air,
and i'm tired of the brown and green of mountains and the mocking
humhumhum
of the wind in the ponderosas
you send a salty kiss my way
and pull me deeper beneath your waves and i can see the
sand dollar cities and
a wall of sea stars and
families of fish
and a shark says hello
and how the water feels different in my lungs and
how it feels different in my hair,
and I see the danger
and I see your anger
but I also see the way you smile
at me and i think i like your little gifts and the shades
of blue in your eyes.
i think i like your lullaby
and your allure
and the way you send me winds filled with new smells
i like the way your hands are not big enough to hold the sea foam and how
you're wild, but you're mine.
