A Moment

I see a moment of happiness on my wife’s face.

She smiles after she gets out of the bay water

before she sees I’m looking.

She holds a towel to her cheek

and stands over the bedsheet

we’ve brought to the beach.

We turned down the offer of reclining chairs,

at high prices, and even more

for the ones with sunshades.

She is glad to be where we are,

to be doing what we are doing,

which isn’t much, really.

But we don’t have to do anything more.

We are sitting on our bedsheet

next to each other on this small beach

around a living Atlantic reef

among the cruise passengers on their rented chairs.

We can stay as long as we want, for free.