Sandwoman
Sandwoman
The woman lay firm in the damp berm of the beach —
she flowed into it and was contiguous with it,
was, in fact, formed of it. The sky chinked through
its hours, its gradations of sky-hues, the azures,
ceruleans, deeper blues, and the golds and roses
of evening. Sky was all she could see, all she
opened her legs to, all her breasts and belly strove
to touch. The sum of her changes were color
and cloud — until the lips of the sea reached her —
those lascivious lips bruised by the moon.
Seaform threw its lace shawl over her shoulders
and fans of lace shrouded her face. Slowly, slowly,
in licks, and then sometimes in spills, the sea
overcame her, her wavy hair running down the beach,
right breast and then left breast crumbling like turrets.
Waves gathered back the seaweed of her pubis,
then licked at her sex until she dissolved the way,
so tasted, all women dissolve. She had given her
heart to the blinding smack of noonday light
and to the soft coruscations of the lamb-back clouds
that traversed her body through the late afternoon,
until she was only a shadow by night. The one who
shaped her with hands knew that love falls through
the body like sand, and the whole of the erotic sculpts
our limbs and faces, teases wide the splay of our legs.
from The Double Task, Univ. of Mass. Press