Sometimes I can’t feel it, what some call beauty

Diane Seuss

I can see it, I swear, the conifers

and fat bees, ferns like church fans

and then the sea, its flatness

as if pressed by stones

like witches were, the dark

sand ridged by tides, strewn

with body parts, claws, the stranded

mesoglea of the moon jellyfish,

transparent blob, brainless,

enlightened in its clarity. I stand there,

I walk the shore at low tide,

the sky fearless, not open to me, just

open, there it is, the wind, cold,

surf’s boom drowning out thought,

I can photograph it, I can name it

beautiful, but feel it, I don’t know

that I am feeling it, when I drown

in it, maybe then.

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