And a wave rolled through us
as you held my hand
a wave made of words
with a frightening buoyancy
lifting us on the swell
until everything else
looked small and distant
from our bright-bladed height.
Our fatal openness
to sound and to cadence
brought us down
unfinished thoughts
collapsing around us
with a thud that shook the margins
and left a tideline of rack
beaked by squabbling gulls.
—with influences and phrases from Chris Nealon's "The Shore."
