Beyond Bolonia Beach

for Quala

The turquoise sea is a trickster -

Its luscious skin, easy on the eyes.

Dappled light to lull a confidence -

all is well in the world. Soft lapping

to lull my ears - overlook the moans of bones

that drift down and down out of mind.

The trickster uses a southern wind

to bait my attention. I watch it

pitch up a hem, bellow a spinnaker;

press the fluid body to a low chop.

I swoon at pilot whales and bottlenoses

who follow the blue boats of Moroccan men.

They fish with hand lines – drag

enormous tuna into their hulls.

I am adrift on the picturesque nature of life here,

enamored with a deep heritage - people, land and sea.

The uplifted limestone filled with fossils, fortified walls,

armored casemates share another view.

The Gibraltar coastline is a portrait of conquest.

Europe has been swallowing Africa for eons.

Perhaps the discreet pace of tectonics and

a penchant for forgetfulness make it unremarkable.

Easy to gloss over injustice with resignation.

Call it destiny, even love.

The bones have another opinion.

For a moment, they are more than fossil record.

I tell myself the unkind deaths are a mercy.

They eased a hard life to rest in limey mud.

Isn’t everything a mountain’s wink

from stone and sand and shell?

In the long view, nothing created, nothing destroyed.

Except for liquid specters of ancestors - they

keep vigil for the lost and keen for the capsized,

the refugees of expropriation and rising tides.

I imagine liquid specters cradling babies, their last breath

briny with the dissolved bones of other babies.

I am using the word cradling to comfort me

as I bring such an image to sit beside my belly.

I am riding along this pristine surf, my horse

is Pegasus - winged and out of touch.

We gallop faster, to out run the trickster and

fresh tragedy, so uneasy on the eyes.

We skirt a crenellated reef of fluvial sandstone,

eyes to the sky, ears on the water.

Riding, riding, riding - the trickster finds his steed, and

I am flung to the sand. Nothing broken, 

everything hurts. Overhead a gull laughs, 
she’s seen every kind of calamity.

I commiserate, a mote in the sea’s eye -
minusculo voice in the anvil chorus,  

speck in time, a speck in time, nothing created, 
nothing destroyed, but stone and sand and specters.