Island Beach

This poem appears in the Summer 2016 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

On the most important day you’ve ever known,
more lovely than Venus rising from the sea,
she emerges from the waves unexpectedly alone
into whatever inexplicably might-be,
dripping wet in her yellow bathing suit,
so heartstoppingly beautiful you never ask why
everything else in your life is suddenly moot
beneath the Jersey sun and the summer sky.
And what preposterous unthinking youthful pride
made you think she’d stop at the dunes at the piers
to look at you, still staring mystified,
and become the love who’d wipe away your fears?
Except, of course, the one you can never forget:
the unfounded fear that you might never have met.