Be strange to yourself,
in your love, your grief.
Your wet eyelashes a black
fringe on brown pain
and your feet unbelievably
sure, somehow, surfing
your own shadow,
that too-large one cresting
just now, too soon for you
to get inside the curl:
the one place in the ocean
where it’s safe. And safe
only for a half-breath
(a fish’s sip with
hooked lip),
only for that one blink
of an eye already shut (tiptoe
to the foreshadow) against
the headlong wall of salt water.
from Our AndromedaFind it in the library
Copyright © 2012 Brenda Shaughnessy
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.