Circles of the Sea
By Reed Venrick
 

ONE

Those last days August, a child building

A sandman for the last time before September’s

School—how soon the summer’s calendar

Turns, as she, kneeling in the sand, glances

Across the waves to the ocean’s horizon, as

She leaping up from the sand, running deep

To the knees in surf, gazing out at a cruise ship

Passing along the ocean a mile beyond the reef.

To a child’s sense of scale, the gargantuan ship,

Looks no bigger than a child’s bathtub toy, and

While, the mother, sitting behind, lounging in

Her beach chair, keeps to the breezy shade

Of a coconut palm, leaning low, pushed

Down from last season’s hurricane, a palm

That hangs coconuts over the water

At high tide. The mother watches

Her daughter gaze toward the passing

Ship, now smaller than a finger nail,

As the child reaches out a hand, she tries

To touch the image—she’s still learning

The illusion of scale. And while many

Calendar years have passed, the mother

Remembers when she was her child’s age

And saw the sea’s horizon so flat that she

Feared the ships would fall over and those

Passengers drown. “But remember, child,

The perception an that you perceive is not

 Always what is true,” she yells, but the daughter

Does not hear—another wave crashes in,

And the sound of surf muffles ears.

TWO

Many hours pass before the sun disappears,

But finally the moon casts shadows of the palm

And trunk hanging low, one frond even

Sweeping over the water, while the mother

And daughter, hand in hand, stroll along

A beach with no name, stopping at a fish

Restaurant in that sea-to-gulf town. They

Do not return to the beach, will not witness

The high tide that rushes in at 11:32 p.m.,

Eroding the exquisite sand castle the daughter

Labored all afternoon to build. Neither

Will they know that the leaning coconut

Palm, where the mother lounged, dropped

A coconut into the high tide, where concentric

Circles spiraled across darkness to create another

Horizon, and will, as earth’s history shows, reach

A shore on another island far across the ocean,

Where another child already builds a sand castle

And gazes out to a passing ship, she not yet

Realizing that horizontal lines eventually turn

To the circles on the cosmic plane called earth.