We live in a summerhouse of ghosts where eternity preserves footfalls imprinted in the flats between sea and dunes. Waves race like Lipizzans to shore, and those not so massive mounds of sand, ocean’s weary gatekeepers, slump and sleep through days and nights, yes, those inky nights when the round face of a Moroccan dancer shimmies high in the sky, coyly slipping in and out of silk veils. And the woman in the moon seems to know something we do not, eyes bright and satisfied, as a path forms before her like floating marigold petals, shimmering, rippling, inviting our steps to defy gravity, to follow those ancient prints off the shore, trailing after them into the blue-black where others went because they, too, were not tethered when the Sirens called.

Previously published in Sea Stories, 2011