Port Aransas, Texas

“What color would you paint this ocean?”

Sitting on a pier bench, Port Aransas
a fractured apricot sky, diesel ferries
churning across the channel.

She sang a hymn to herself.
“I see silver, but there’s black”.
In that shimmering opacity
I caught porpoises in my camera lens.
Stilled their rising and falling
at the bow of a slow moving tug.
We walked to the beach
and laid down. After an hour
the first star rose
northeast of the moon.
A thin grit of salt
blurred my eyeglasses.
We undressed under a canopy
of blooming stars
as white bellied Sea Bass
leapt from the iridescent wash
over the roaring gulf waves.

Later, at home, the shades turned
down to keep the heat and city out,
the ocean shook lose my fixations.
The theme was constant dance.
And it caught us;
my fists braced in the sand
her eyes jewels of white light,
tongues of foam licked us
as she came
rising and falling,
singing a crystalline
overture to what can’t
be named.