her sculpture beats mine

A woman
with back turned, arms
crossed cradling knees
drawn all the way up
- she had to lean
all the way forward
to meet them - head
bowed so low her hair
made a waterfall
fanning out from where
it kissed sand - she made
a sculpture herself,
or vice versa

You couldn't tell
she was anywhere from young
to everlasting, right here
on this very beach. It was
just some beach a moment ago. And

it wasn't clear, was she crying,
or basking her strapless back?

Or modeling? I
was set a ways back, and I wanted
a circle of solemn, serious intent
sculptors all around her, channeling
each their separate views into
the available sand, digging for wet
to approximate her sheen, and catch
and hold her

perfect ease of command.

Two problems with this. No, three:
there were no such onlookers, at least
not sculpturally inclined, and anyway
too few nearby to capture all sides. Two,
it would be yet another problematic
instance of the subjectification
of female form. And her sand doppelgangers
as they grew in wet, hand-scooped slap,
shaped by subtraction
in shaping caress and finger-carved
line, would be in some sense
objectifications. In some sense,
of her. Three,

how fast can these guys work? Because
she's already getting burned. Which
is all hers, and none of my concern

but

I couldn't help noticing, and
having noticed, I tend to care

anyway. Of all that is here,
this is all neither here
nor there. You might have to seek
in myth or shared subliminal
realms to find parallels
- she is become her own
Pygmalia of her own
Galatea,
or something

To put it in a snob way.
What can I say? I basked,
I cried - having just come
from the waves, my face all wet

I could plausibly deny anything,
thinking nothing of these reflections
and implications I try
to pass off later
as in-the-moment. No,

Really we know in such moments, all
one can do is notice

How much sense pours in - visual of course,
but salt tang of air as well, a tongue, throat
and bellyfeel of cold bouillon swallowed
sea, a boom surf and the tingling all
of cold-hot skin in baking wet sheen
- and her. Who we just noticed
with a force of all this
there is no need to explain
later. More than speechless:
wordless.

We are overwhelmed, taken aback
in a sort of awe of the everyday
we usually let pass by, entirely
missed

All this reflection comes later,
is for later. And it never could sculpt
or catch in a frame of what was, what was once
is.