Shorelined

You can tell me that the sky is azure-bright,
that the ocean’s calm reflects the glistering sun,
that the tide is slipping beyond the curve of the bay,
that children build sandcastles on distant beaches.

You can smother my senses with strands of silk,
brush my hair across my face, into my eyes,
clothe me in finest slubbed linen, couture-cut,
whisper your soothing falsehoods into my ears.

But even blindfold, I know the sea’s narrative:
how on this bleak day the tide washes in
salttears and cuttlefish, driftwood and birdbones,
how the dunes are stripped bare in the wind,
how the horizon blurs water into air into water.
How the end comes, stormy and shipwrecked.