The play of sun on a prospective lover

Today, I am building a quiet mandala of you,
limbs four open gates, your body sand. A drifting

east and west of space, down here where wind
breathes water, and sea kelp billows greenly far

far out, borrowing light from all this burning blue.
Dunlins dip, turning stones of sound like time-pieces,

counting the edging tide as it lips along your skin
in ways I've yet to learn to do. I could leave us here.

You star-circled, washed, transparent as a saint,
and me kneeling, a meditative colourist in shifting shells.

I am a gull's distant eye, I magnify our little things.
The winged shadow of my arm, your conched hands,

how sea holds a sliver of sky from a mackerel flank,
the way sun fishers me in, hesitant as baited water.