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Waterside Protector

© Linda Stein, June 2020

Feeling coolness, I touch
the advancing foam-laced border of sea,
with contours echoing my doodles.
Retreating, the surf exposes the sand
pockmarked, vulnerable, yet rich with morsels of wonder.

I breathe in the ocean and invite it into my body.
With fingers out-stretched into inlets,

I internalize the water’s power, and cry out
at the instant of the crashing wave’s orgasmic explosion.
I have succeeded, at this meeting of sky, sea, sand, shell, stone
in capturing the ocean.

I am the ocean.

I walk slowly, stopping every few steps,
to retrieve half an empty oyster home
with its craggy abstractness and asymmetry,
more seductive
than the less-mottled shells.

I will embed this casing into my sculpture-to-be.

Each stippled scrap that I lift up
and adopt from its environment
reveals its own fragility and lure.
I see it as skin
for the torso I’ve yet to create.

I identify it as chosen.

If I reverse my decision,
returning it to the sand
and moving on without it,
I feel guilt for betraying and abandoning it,
worrying for its safety.

I, Protector.