Impressions in Sand

Because I feel as though I might implode

beneath the weight of my own need to find the words

that speak my heart and move my mind and match my pace,

I seek to energetically transform my sense of place

I speak to existentially express my voice

I move to seamlessly embody psychic space

I act to self-reflexively examine choice

I watch the birds to learn how wings embrace

I savor wind to feel how clouds rejoice

I sing with waves so I can taste the water’s trace

across the salty sand, where coexistence demonstrates

permanency of fossilized shells alongside ephemerality of footprints,

a performance of how everything that’s washed away remains

alive in timelessness, where temporal dimensions

intersect on a fluid shoreline, a timeline drawn in sand

by the crab’s sideways impressions

imprinted on a temporary canvas that always stays

infinitely in flux and consistently present

in an ongoing conversation between sea and sand,

salt and earth, a recorded history of predictions for the future

And now I swim in weightlessness of water

and skim my toes to carve my words in sand,

beside the nautilus in spiral wisdom,

to be swallowed by the sea, tasted by me

in traces of song and salt on the wind, waving to me

a new canvas of sand, inevitable conversation,

and saving me from that impending implosion.

--Diana Tigerlily