The small boy I am
impossibly familiar with
comes running down the beach,

not as a growing speck
from the distance,
but a boy who’s just decided to be a boy,
a boy who is running to me,

who knows everything
in the most humble way.

So humble that it isn’t even humble.
So loving that it isn’t even love.
I can never hurt his feelings,
he’s so filled with me.

He’s wise enough not to know his wisdom.

Look at the way
his feet are racing
his feet, swift and surprised
at their own lightness.

He is only a small spurt / He chooses to stay
away from flying / on the sand,

because what he has come to do is joy.

He dives and lays his mouth
down at the sand’s first hints of wet.

He sucks
up water

first like the warmest
soup from a spoon,
it grows to an obedient
typhoon, the sea’s creatures
condensing in the middle,

all running for his welcome throat,
the way he ran to me.

When all the ocean’s in–wait,
you have to see this.
The neverending miles dry.
Every mountain and valley.
The beautiful folds the waves have made.
It is a loving desert.

The kind you would not die in,
though there’s no food,
it would take care of you,
it would let you walk it all your life.

***

Katie Przybylski

Katie Przybylski (shuh-bil-skee, ha!) hails from Michigan, where she grew up among many automobiles and squirrels. She currently studies and writes in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Ubiquitous, Correspondence, and Way of the Word. She wishes you well.