Three Rockaway Beach Poems for Sandy

Rockaway Beach Setting Sun Octet

(5/25/17)

the sun lays down across the Pacific; there’s

no word for that flash, the water rolling gray

& the spume’s ragged hair catching slanted light,

creases where breakers lose eastern momentum

in steel blue ripples, one gull in silhouette

progressing north toward the point’s curtain of haze;

damp sand gleams here & there with beached jellyfish,

repositories of light in their transit

◦           ◦            ◦

Rockaway Beach Sea & Sky Octet

(5/26/17)

from one angle the surf shows its face tattoo

ink blue; these rocks expose skin gray & sunburned

& olive, but the driftwood’s bleached; in solid

blue sky the dragon kite weaves smiling through gusts,

the boy guiding that mythic body on twine;

north, the butterfly kite trails long blue tassels,

reaching back into past lives; from another

angle surf mirrors tidal green in your eyes

◦           ◦            ◦

Salal at the Ocean Octet

(5/27/17)

salal’s heart blossoms dangle white fringed crimson

in the Pacific’s gray breath; on the one hand,

swarms of ghosts, on the other this thing called love;

two black driftwood logs washed up on this moment’s

edge of the continent shift in incoming

tide; you in your gray sweater running beside

the dog you said in joy; salal heart blossoms

turn to bells in sea’s perpetual echo

Jack Hayes

© 2017