The ball bounces to rest at my feet.
All around me, beautiful bodies utterly blank.

My heart races with each head ducked
beneath the waves.  My hand is a glass

that never empties.  Sails litter the ocean
with bird wings.  Water takes centuries to caress

rock to the sand that supports our weight.
I watch the surf until the sun goes down.

None of that storied violence is visible.

***

Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, Qualm, Subtropics, and The Kenyon Review Online.  His first book of poems, City of Regret (2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and he has been the recipient of a Jentel Residency, a Houston Arts Alliance Fellowship, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship, and a D. H. Lawrence Fellowship.