Selected Poems

On the Beach

Max is blind, and I stand a little way off
so he doesn’t hear me.
I watch him wade into the surf,
feeling his way with submerged toes, 
carefully lifting his feet like a sandpiper.
After a while he just stands and lets the surf 
wash up around his legs, dump its silt, escape.
The noise here quiets us both.
It’s noon, and I see all the dazzled,
teeming blues, the shallow greens, the sun-drenched 
bodies of tourists, their exhaustion. Does he feel 
only the sun’s warmth and the cool weight 
of the ocean burying his feet? If it were night, 
maybe I would stand beside him in the dark
and think I understood, but I would still 
see all the degrees darkness can have, 
the grays and blues and blacks of distance 
between us and the horizon. Would he still be intent
on nothing but ocean?
I wonder what he listens for.
He wades farther out, and I watch 
the roll of his shoulders, the wave of his hair, the salt sea 
kissing his white skin.

(published in The Old Red Kimono)