At Shark Reef Sanctuary
Only seagulls surround us balanced on their parameter of hunger, and seals who in their soft-body swim roll onto the rocks to stretch their skin to infinite edges. They lie about like sleeping infants. If there are sharks they swim beneath sight. The water slides by undisturbed and the cold sun slips through a seam in the clouds. Persistent wind like a child's wailing cramps our fingers intertwined like nest twigs. The picnic, pocketed into parts, will wait. We will be as those seals, full-fat on ocean air and lying beneath the cloud shift until the tidemark measures the horizon and our huddled bodies take the shape of stones.
Published by The Midwest Quarterly, 2003. Copyright © 1999 by Eva Alice Counsell. Used with permission. All rights reserved.