Relentless

The waves keep coming

Like love they knock me

Into their same,

And I skin my knees

Sun’s fire dripping

Salt screaming

Over my voice

Yanked to and fro

In the undertow

Which baby turtles throw

Themselves into

Moon’s gravity rows

Over shore

An offering of shells

Plump gulls and plovers

Fight over

I extract myself,

Labored breath mentioning

Death like a homecoming

Not today, I say

Forcing myself upright

In the sand

Ghost crabs rambling

Across dry shadows

Small, excavated piles

Flung from their residence

My stringy hair thwacks my back

My teeth crunch on the grit

Of eaten words

Foam roams up to my ankles

Soothing my fatigue

The heat returns in shame

To my cheeks

My weaknesses tested and bested

By repetition—which some

Claim as insane, but I see

As the only way to hope,

To swim out far enough

To the sand bar,

To see reefs of polyps

And starfish,

To glimpse beneath

The surface of a dream,

To star on the stage

Of delirium,

To wage war against yourself

For love

The relentless waves

Will not cave into our needs,

But shape up,

Shape Earth,

Revealing secrets

Shell by shell

And swell in pride

When we endure