Tara K. Shepersky

They’ve bloomed—clear jelly epitaphs
lavished on strange sands. Wind-harried sailors:
Hydrozoa was here.
A few strewn blue-lipped bodies still
plump with sea-shout, sunlight shriveling.

On what occasion does cold Pacific
order such bouquets?

Wrack line implacably delivers.

Barefoot–to climb the rocks
and ford the greengold deepblue braided streams,
my mind comes late to contemplate
toxins, fishkills, all the usual news
read through my soles.

A new study tells us alcohol
will take years off your life.
Which years?—a friend,
his glass upraised. Who says
I want them?

Can you exchange this salted rim for a day
to breathe the salt in wind, bury
sandy toes? Would you trade 
that silty burrowing,
halve your joy, for fear?

Another friend is dying.
Forty-five, and braided through
with tumors like the seaward grains of sand.
Did some choice—hers, a government’s,
shareholders’—steal those years?

Blindly bargained woman, fierce—
generous, and loved. Tangled

at our unprotected feet

wrack line lays down all the gifts
that wash in our direction.

We are here.
Barefoot in the sand
with open hands.

***

Published first in Cascadia Rising Review: 
https://www.cascadiarisingreview.com/before-ordering-a-second-margarita. Thanks very much to the thoughtful and responsive CRR editorial team.