Room to Exhale

It is windy on the beach
and the seagrass carves new art in the sand.
The seagulls fly into the wind, barely moving,
in perfect balance between flight and wind
suspended statues in mid-air.

You sit on the sand. The wind stills.
Waves fall one on the others.
Otherwise it is quiet,
so quiet you hear the sand crunch beneath you
as you sit.

There are clouds, pockmarks of gray
in a blue sky. And then there is sun, warm on your face.
and seeping through the thick fabric of your jeans
and the unseasonable flannel of your shirt.
May has arrived and even in these northern climes,

it is warm.

You have come to this place not to escape,
but rather to travel where the sky is empty
and no one talks to you or asks,
where there are no shoulds or oughts,
where there is room to exhale

everything
that is not you.

About this poem

The picture was taken at Hampton Beach, NH.

Tom