The morning walk
along our stretch
of shore suspended,
my daughter, alight
with curiosity,
holds the hard husk
out to me in her palm.
Obsidian black
and desiccated,
flecked with sand,
the skate egg case is open
at one end, a nascent tear:
a modest aperture to briny,
underwater amplitudes.

I explain that somewhere
out in the Atlantic—today
tinged cerulean blue and green—
a skate is swimming.
Its diamond shape
soars in subaquatic space,
wings through water like a kite.
And from its body
the color of sand
an invisible thread
unspools for miles,
rising eventually
out of the waves,
enchanted fishing line
into my daughter’s hand.