34-37 Degrees South: Easy reading version

Letting Go
Linda Mcquarrie-Bowerman
I’ve reached the beach, skipped down the weathered wooden steps, and stopped eyes closed
to listen to the sacred talking of the sand: it whispers, hisses,
and whips my naked shins, the sting
reminding me of hurtled words slapping rigid air between us.
We are scattered shells along this dawn-tinged littoral: me
and one old woman in her crumpled cotton spotted shirt, a faceless surfer now an elongated
dot
atop a white-tipped frothy plume—he bobs and dips and I’m reminded of a lover
I once had his bony limbs caught fast between my knees both of us entangled
in purple frayed chenille—as one silent seagull glides by wings splayed
over a sinking dune, a solitary plover teetering on legs like twigs
impaling me with its black and beady eyes. I twitch my shoulders stiff and smarting
at the sting of the sun, my shadow
dark and stretched ahead, dripping down towards the waterline.
I shiver as I watch the thrashing of a lone untethered skiff
whose ropes have slipped their orange mooring buoy and I sense a slow untethering
of ropes invisible and tightly-knotted binding me to thoughts of you. I imagine
every memory adrift on ripples: shrinking muted specks moving closer to a flat horizon
as I stand and turn, my grateful shadow now behind me relieved of its responsibility
to keep me company; it is extinguished as a long slim cloud, white egret
stretched in flight, casts its shade.
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