My Friend, Her Grandson

^{Brigantine Beach}

I.

The wind is blue.
Blue, the boy tells me.
It dusts the reed-filled dunes,
then scuds across sand to water’s edge.

II.

We lie on the beach. Gray waves
advance, retreat. The blue wind, salt scrub,
scours my skin. Sharks troll for toddlers.
Patrol planes hum below the cloudy scrim.

III.

I climb the jetty’s ragged point.
From the churning reef,
I find the boy, a speck on the shore,
asleep on a blue cot. 

IV.      

His grandmother’s hand
soothes his damp head. She sings,
songs that lilt on the blue wind.
The jets drone on in steel-eyed formation.
           
V.

A black-headed gull arrows toward the buoy.