Beachballs as colorful as the flower-hat 
jelly fish and carried by the wind; gulls,
gray, white and black, screeching like a stainless
steel knife against beer bottle, and competing for
crumbs around the abandoned lounge chair;
airplanes bannering Best Parasailing Guaranteed;
pull-carts hauling tents and towels and little tots; 
white sand pocked with a million footprints, dunes
and craters here and there, sometimes a castle
doomed to wed with water; the young, tanned and 
bronzed, playing frisbee, some showing off 
their full-bodied, labyrinthine tattoos, others 
with a single design, but all slathered in shine
to pay homage to the sun god; the old, tummies
protruding like a frog’s goozle, wading
at water’s edge, searching for shells, or resting 
under umbrellas and behind dark glasses; a loud 
speaker expanding the sounds of a couple’s
i-phone playlist, the two facing each other, inching
closer, then touching, then embracing, we breathing
their sweetness; waves lapping the shore and
retreating time and time again, their monotony fresh,
like new tongues.
                        

I see him even now, fixed on the task,
little golden tack pursed between his lips,
hammer in right hand, another tack 
in his left, straddling a rusty cast-iron shoe
form to re-sole his Sunday slippers.
I watch him measuring and cutting 
the stiff leather square, fitting it
to the bottom of the shoe	
from midway the sole to the toe,
the work as methodical and precise 
as the earth’s rotation, and then 
securing it with tacks and tap, tap,
tap of the hammer. In those moments
he appears god-like, showered
in the golden light of the twenty-five-watt
naked bulb suspended from ceiling. In his
aloneness, he is making do. In his silence,
he is articulating the language of love.
                        

	After Jo McDougall

These are scars from the transurethral resections, 
the surgeon says, pointing to the dark red markings
on the screen, little ribbons serpentining their way
through the blushing pink flesh of the pear-shaped
sac. I hold my breath, look to the ceiling and close
my eyes as he scopes one last time for tiny planets 
menacing around inside. And then he stops. No
tumors. Suddenly, his white coat sprouts wings, 
the sputtering water in the plastic bottle sings like 
dulcet diamonds and the dull-gray ceiling explodes 
into a canopy of shooting stars