The Widening Sky**  

I feel myself shrinking,  
walking the night beach  
under the ever-widening sky.  

The sand clings to my feet,  
then is washed away  
in the tide’s haste  
to kiss the shore,  
only to recoil  
when it tastes  
the grit of life—  

the ancient attraction-repulsion  
born the moment  
the first creature rose from the sea,  
breathed, lingered  
on the still, silent sand.  

And I recall my mother’s lullaby,  
a hushed song that once swayed the air,  
telling of the slip that heard  
Mother Ocean call—  
no longer a command  
but a longing,  

a tide reaching, retreating,  
pleading for what once was hers:  

"Oh, dear sea-child of mine,  
I weep when I hear  
your quiet refusal—  
you will not return  
to my salt-bound embrace."  

Her voice, low and wavering,  
held the weight of salt-laden sorrow,  
a plea stretched thin  
like foam dissolving at the shore.  
Each refrain a remnant,  
each pause a hesitation—  
as though waiting for me  
to answer.  

From behind and beyond,  
the feelers of Calypso unfurl,  
know of the colorfully dressed  
streams that live in pastel houses—  

my neighbors’ voices, celebrating on  
the tarmac street, carving a clean  
divide between sand and sea  
and the subdivision’s order.  

Not hands nor voices,  
but motion and rhythms,  
a swirl of sounds  
pulsing under steel drums—  

a force, a motion,  
the sway of limbs,  
a rhythm spilling from windows,  
tugging my breath,  
threading through the percussive air.  

And yet, beyond the curb’s edge,  
the tide still stretches,  
its foamy fingers outstretched—  
not grasping, not demanding,  
just waiting—  
lapping once, twice,  
a quiet pulse returning  
to the depths.  

The wind gathers the tide’s sigh,  
folds it into the music of the street,  
lifts it beyond houses, beyond roads,  
carrying the hush of salt and longing  
farther than any wave could reach—  

where, in the cooling night,  
a trace of brine lingers in the air,  
where the wind turns brackish,  
faint as a whisper,  
the ocean still breathing its call,  
a whisper curling at the edge of sound,  
the ocean still exhaling its call.  

I see a conch shell in the glowing darkness,  
pick it up, watch its pink body  
retract into its protective shelf.  

I feel awe at this tiny creature's ability  
to deny my ear the simple desire  
to hear the song of the ocean.  

I drop it on the sand,  
witness the tide kiss and cradle it.  

For a moment, I stay still,  
listening—  
to the hush of salt and steel drum echoes,  
to the tide’s patient pull  
and the rhythms spilling through open windows.  

Something shifts.  

The pull of the tide is no longer stronger  
than the pulse of the street.  
I withdraw into the nacre of myself,  
disappearing so far into the dark  
that I vanish from the night’s sight.  

Then, Calypso draws me to the block party.  
In the haze of the streetlight,  
I am the same size as all the other revelers—  

no more or less significant than  
anyone else in this vast sea of love.