"Never so ghosted or small as when alone ..."

"Never so ghosted or small as when alone

on the fragile truce of this strand where sky

and sea stretch what you can hold in the shell

of your ear, your film of skin, between your eyes,

standing on wrack and kelp amid the shoosh

of crisped surf on cockled sand and shore stones.

From further out you feel the heave and thrash

of black-green breakers, bull-headed hellbenders,

white-tipped whale waves, as the swollen lour

and weight of the world in water thunders

while crosswinds girl and breach to scour

and scrub clean the hollow and heft of yourself."

-- from On Cloughey Beach by Alan Gillis

Montaña de Oro State Park, California.