is damp and dense and heavy with such old
old life. Gently, relentlessly, she hones
the sand soft. Fleas and crabs hide from the cold
nights, clicking quiet rain sounds in the bones

of driftwood sea monsters. Toes dig, designed
to grasp the earth as arms crane toward the black
pierced by a thousand ancient lights that shined
a hundred billion years ago. Look back

and stare as one–two–three could not hold fast;
they streak into the infinite and vast.