Sandstone

Paddle ball on the shore

The slapped ball spatters

Salty sweat

Volley ball, sand cushions fall,

The referee: a net

Diamond kite wrestling the wind,

Playing with the sky

Surfers run in with their boards under an arm

Tight surf shirts on, Wanting to be the kite

They glide the waves,

and when they fall in,

They don't mind.

A man standing on his surfboard, rowing,

Paddle in, paddle out

Fathers look behind them to see

Their little children swallowed by grand waves,

Laughing beneath them.

A middle-aged woman sitting on a stump-like rock,

Her back to me,

Her hair like the kite...

A fallen woman floats on her back, onto the sand,

Her own laughter delays her rise. She has become the starfish.

Birds peck between grains of sand

Finding treasures in our crumbs,

Chasing each other away

A sailboat plays with the waves, with the wind

High squeals, giggles, young men belly-flat on boards, floating,

Lovers on every other blanket,

Laying, resting,

Becoming the rocks.

A dog buries its face in the sand before rubbing its fur Against the rock the woman sat on. It runs along the shore I walked on.

It squeals like children,

And I sit

Frozen by it

Like the rock is stilled by the sand that it once was.

Athens, Greece. September, 2014