I haven’t been to the beach in a very long time.
\nMy mother says the waves make her
\nnauseous- sorry, nauseated
\n(My mother’s an English major).<\/p>\n
Last week, I went to the beach.
\nI hated the sand.
\nI hated the sun (sunscreen
\nevery 15 minutes for this
\nuntoasted marshmallow skin).
\nI hated the wind tangling my hair.
\nI hated the salt water spilling
\nwithout my permission
\npast my lips, and teeth, and tongue.<\/p>\n
I liked watching the waves.
\nWhile my friends napped on towels
\nor laughed in the roiling sea,
\nI felt my eyes forever pinned on the waves.
\nThe water pulls and tugs at itself,
\nfolds and bends and crinkles.
\nIt builds itself into towers that,
\nlike Babylon, must fall.
\nThey tumble in so many droplets
\nstill a single wall of water.
\nIt crashes against the surface,
\na blow shattering both victim and fist.
\nIt rolls across the ocean surface,
\nsplitting, reforming, colliding.
\nThe wave turns to so many smaller
\nbubbling crests that race one another
\nacross the shallow shore.
\nThey trip and surge and stumble,
\nsmoothing into a a sheet over the sand,
\na calm caress of water against my toes
\nbefore the next skyscraper, already plummeting,
\nsucks it back for the dramatic impact,
\nthe collision of earth and sea
\nand sky
\nbecause everywhere is sky.<\/p>\n
I know why the Greeks thought horses sprang from the surf.
\nWhat else could breed such stampeding graceful power?<\/p>\n
The tide came for our towels, and we left.
\nOur bags full of sand,
\nmy feet scratched from constant abrasion,
\nfeeling sticky and grainy all over.
\nI would have rather gone camping.
\nBut I liked watching the waves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I haven’t been to the beach in a very long time. My mother says the waves make her nauseous- sorry, nauseated (My mother’s an English major). Last week, I went to the beach. I hated the sand. I hated the sun (sunscreen every 15 minutes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1071"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47871"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53899,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47871\/revisions\/53899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}