Your foot first descends like a butterfly in the desert. You want 

to be sand. Bounding, rough red heels rounding into forgiving 

earth, lifting and dropping again, 

the yellow sun causing the tips of the waves to gleam. 

Near the shore the first urge is to chase, the second is to turn away and run. It’s terrible, the water. It draws 

you to it, threatens and chases you back to the dry beach. 

The tops of your toes are sandy. Chin in hand, leaning on one bent elbow, you reach

a small orange shovel into the hole you are digging

—it is the bottom half

of the moon and I choose to fill it. I watch you turning.

Your series of angles severe and then mild as you straighten

the length of your body along the warm and dry sand, getting

as close as you can.