Interoceptor

The beach was splendid without anyone touching
in the dark spaces of dunes, without brown bottles broken in the coals of old fires,
without the dog unhooked from leather leash heaving
himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge.
When I was the only body through which the wind
could rattle before reaching the earth,
when my tears were the only water besides the sea
and the blood in the sand fleas and the single gull,
when the yellow foam at the thin hem of the sea coming up
reminded me of a shaken soft drink or the top of the grapefruit juice,
and I was the only one in cotton, the only one
standing beside the strewn and sanded wood,
I was not sharing this space with anyone with a camera,
no volleyball, no blanket, towel or sunscreen bottle leaking,
when every little thing went through and into me and
not to or through or from anyone else –
that was not perfect,
but a certain great smallness.
My body felt large, my eyes big enough to take in
this section of the shore, my head to hold it,
my lungs to carry the bricks of the wall of air,
my feet to press down the grains that one to one to one to
rock to vein to liquid metal stayed down,
and there was I, in my body, in my clothes blowing,
open to the undersides of my fingers to the face,
the cliff, the elbows of the ocean bending.