When the firecrackers had gone and my family had gone
laughing up the stairs
I took off my sweater and stepped into salt.
This full moon flashed on the lipping
envelope knees bent to barnacled shapes,
underneath the sound of a distant boom boom boom

my irises slipped. To the place where boom boom boom
faded into swoosh hush hmmm where a family
of kelp wrapped these ankles near the surface. The stairs
woke up then and pushed me into the shapes
of empty crab shells, these offerings to salt
after dinner. They were lipping

the cliff in the silver fallen leaf shadow. In the lipping
light breeze they were speaking of running bare feet boom boom boom ,
of the everyday ascent after swim with salt.
Drying to the skin in moments I would run past my family
into the attic to dry on the window ledge examining the shapes
of the sea urchins, drying there. They were carried up the stairs

from the boat to the dock to the roof of a beach house, those stairs
were their own kind of message. A lipping envelope of air bringing wet shapes
into light where just dust of water remains sifting off boom boom boom
to the cloth of my bed. At the window I allow this family
dust to sift a music of salt.

Yes, I rolled over to glimpse that round salt
colored home where eyelids fell into the stairs
of sleep. I spent simmer nights on the roof counting my family
and under the kelp and dock and firecrackers lipping
the words into a prayer. The boom boom boom boom
kept time above the water. In the river shapes

of the current expire phosphorous life in shapes
of arms pulling and pushing; this weight in salt.
There was this blood moving there boom boom boom
pushing through skin against water at midnight. Denying logic you transcend the stairs
leaping down pattering up carrying flesh through lipping
breezes where sea urchins abalone crab and family