Into the Breach

The breach of good sense is not reading the sign

before swimming at Breach Inlet. The woman

sitting in the beach chair journaling runs to warn me —

Come back! Come back! I think, jellyfish

or possibly sharks. No, it's the current & a thousand

& forty dollar fine. Okay, next time I'll read first.

My goal today is swimming, Breach Inlet my first

extremely short dip. Sure enough, the huge sign

makes the danger perfectly clear. At least a thousand

places one could choose to swim, I'm the woman

who picks the wrong one. A lone jellyfish

half buried in sand, still inflated, tempts me

to flip it over, & then, What if it's alive & stings me?

Back in the car I head where I was headed first —

Isle of Palms County Park & hope no jellyfish

will have caused an official to post a sign

saying, No swimming here either. The woman

guarding the gate waves me on. So many thousand

times I'm grateful for my park pass — thousands,

well, hundreds of dollars I save, cause I'm me,

the chances-are-she's-outside-not-inside woman

who goes bicycling instead of shopping, not first

to the sale but first in the water, my tan a sign

of where I spend my hours. The latest jellyfish

pic shot from my phone reminds me of jellyfish

pics in long-lost albums, hundreds, thousands

of nature photos — that most are lost is a sign

that I'm past caring how you'll remember me.

I'm ready to lose anything I savored first.

Call me the world's least acquisitive woman.

At Kit's house this afternoon four women

learn blind contour drawing — not jellyfish

but hands, flowers, & whelks — today the first

lesson. We are to draw daily until thousands

of hours spent let Frances, Helen, Linda, & me

know that we can. Pencil drawings, unsigned.

Today's swim, today's drawings, first of a thousand

for a woman who wouldn't mind being a jellyfish.

Sea, if you're willing to take me, give me a sign.