Our Coasts are Never Clear

Miranda Wedberg

Looking at the flying fish with ocean down our cheeks,
We pack up for another beach. We stayed here five whole weeks.
They move about with such mystique –slow or much too fast,
And so, we run to match the pace. One seaside would not last.

We rush o’er the banks of stone that scatter ‘neath
Our soles, for ever kept in crevices of time, the lines
Of all these eons chasing wings, the shimmer’d sheath
To our awful knife, which cuts one common wine off vines
Grown tame and wild by turns of tide and change of shade
Reflected by the fish flesh in the sunset where they fade

You ask me ‘Why’d the fishes go and swim into the sun?’
I say that maybe they felt cold. The coral reef seems lonesome.
I couldn’t fully tell, and so I’m asking someone else.
She says the fish fled toothy squids that tried to hold them down.
He says the fish flew out of love, schools melting into one.
They shrug. “What else is left undone? Could be, it’s just for fun.”