Florida, 1984

The ocean started tearing apart
its geometry.
The ocean, a
sideways head
dead on a dinner plate
looking out at us
through the silver sheath,
set far back in the dunes,
incongruous fray of shell bits and
coconut parts and dry leaves on sand plateau.

It woke up.

White eyebrows and white
whiskers about the mouth
opened wide and shut,
yawned
at the passing feet of me
when I was not much
more than
three.

A gull cawed,
then,
hoisted in the pitch of the
wind before it rained and we
could not take our bicycles out
of the oil stained garage.