Primary colors: blue, taupe, marine green.
Primary sound: the gargle of the waves
trounching the shore, leaving delicate patterns
filigreed on sand. I lie belly up, arms extended,
on a clammy towel, eyelids fused against the sun.
The air’s saline, soggy odor permeates,
saturates my lungs, slowing body functions
to warm, untroubled tranquility.
To drowse is a pleasure, to quaver, joy,
for I am basking in a sticky cloaks
of salt and sand which each movement gently
flakes off, exposing more flesh to be
flushed by the sun, to simmer in the sun.
Overhead (I cannot see them but can hear
their sharp squawks, seagulls circles
against the cerulean sky descending invisible
stairways to the tidewater clams. Kindly,
a sea breeze washed over my caramel skin.
*
Don’t recall why I thought sunbathing was a particularly poetic experience, but I do detect the influence of Lawrence Durrell, of whom I was an avid reader at eighteen: opening lines modeled on some from the Alexandria Quartet itself but also a certain style and topos .of his poems