Tunneling to the Beach

Not merely what is said but the shape of it
keyed in on a sky the color of burnt kelp methadone
bringing us that much closer

              A traditional serpentine engagement
              as would lead you but
              to spin back in upon yourself

                              & something that hit up against it sideways
                              to produce a kind of ring like the gong-effect in a
                              doppler profile

flow measure   /   underwater acoustics   /   the freight train blues

                                                as if to say “We was ethereal”

& the tide cuts deep & the light
                  just so we know where we are (west) & brief like eternity
in a bucket signing off to thin blue lines crosshatched within a sky that’s now silver in my dreams but from here on out hula-hoops its way to the pearly gates & beyond (primarily at sea-level & beyond) eventually to reach whatever it means this time “The Golden State” in a Cal-Tiki fog sketched out in blurry, sacrificial neon too often made that same bad turn late in the drop, the damp, the close-out drizzle & crush, told its own story about how morning was nothing but a tangle of flame
              beneath a rock
                              at the bottom of the sea