At the Gulf

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At the Gulf (see in Gallery / Store) | Image by Bruce Harris

On the edge of the white beach I am alone near the sea grass tall and waving and dying. Again

and again and again the shore laps in the hot wind. The sand here is powder. At times windswept

leaving ripples across the wide plain into the gulf that is firming the firmed shore where walkers

walk and runners run and bikes wheel with asphalt assurance.

The mind drifts in the timeless glare. How is this sand so fine? Fingers claw through its chalky

grains. Hours lost in the digging cool. A broken shell between thumb and finger testing its

edges in the dark. Imagine time polishes it smooth as desert bone. Gulls gather and rise sure as tide.

Humans pass under the darting shadows. In the tinny distance, music.

Spanish and English and sea-bird chatter swirl. A family plays football with two small boys.

The younger’s hair sprung like snakes escaping a can bouncing with each giggling stride and

the older tracks him down, a hawk on its prey. Their mother runs at their side and a grandfather

raises his hands to the airborne ball, stiffens, falls backward, and melts into the milky sand.

I drop the broken shell in the wrist-deep dark. Feel a cigarette butt under the next layer of my

scratching. Pull it into the sunlight soft weathered and used. Flick it into the sea grass near a

soda can half buried faded, fading, and wax paper bends into a sail around a petrified stalk.

A child runs alone through a gaggle of gulls that lift into the shore wind flapping her arms as if to

fly away or disappear like a cloud of smoke.