Rip Tide
- by Linn Barnes
There is confusion on the beach.
The birds are marching in close formation.
I strain the sand for sight or sound
and read the waves for the drowning man.
I am upended in the roaring surf,
dragged into the fleeing tide,
swept to the edge of the deep blue,
lashed to the fins of a bottle nosed giant:
Where I am flashed the horror of some past life
colliding with the unimaginable, now at speed,
dragged rudely to twenty fathoms, scraping the bottom,
finally surfaced and marooned on an unknown shore.