100 MILES

Anywhere the sea’s still blue

you may find her watching 

lost among the architecture 

of shifting waves and seabirds

a vastness built from uncertain lines

like the narrow strip of sand 

that buys her time

from inevitable reunion.

Beside her

a bustling blue girl squats

diminutive in ocean math

this relic of the second day

scuttles like a sand crab 

building ziggurats.

And in the space between them

a tiny wind-bled voice calls out:

“Mother, those naughty men of clay

are due their lesson!”

Mother frowns

then smiles brightly

she glances coyly at the mounds

and delivers a tremendous kick—

the earthen village flies

100 miles.

Her daughter laughs 

and rising now

she wraps the sky around her mother

who unfolds herself 

back

into the sea. 

From the volume in progress, as yet unnamed