by Maura A. Conlon

Her body could wait no longer.

That’s how it happens, how a woman

Leaves for the hills or the sea, when the

One she loves is lured by quicksand, 

The quest for heroics, needing to be

a lauded one.

But far below his crown ascendant shimmered 

the sweetest red rose,

Perhaps you can smell it, the

one—in another lifetime—he might

Have draped along her smooth thigh 

at night,

Peering into her eyes, 

Trusting, finally, his own tidal song, how

She’d stood at the water’s edge, all along.

Waiting.

–September swirls, and the sunset sea bathes her body.

A seal alights, creates ripples, slithers into the

Ocean whose tides deepen to rose red.

She unloosens her skin’s threads, 

Weaves a blessing upon the green linen land,

Which blesses her in return, no second thought, 

no hesitation, at all.

This is love, she whispers: the wink of surrender,

The pulse of the wild current,

Holding her flesh in ecstasy, this sea season.