The Beach Where All Babies Are Born

We mailed ourselves the moonstones home.
Ten pounds of them, a private beach
That cuts and cuts and cuts the feet.
Where all babies are born, but not any of mine.

Who strews the gifts, who distributes
Them, who carries them, what mailman.
The stones were the way Tove
Jansson drew them. Empty circles,
Somehow heavy. Shingle, beautiful
Murmurous word. I think often
Of the white light of the north
And its artists—that the eye up there
Is more particular, somehow, because
The beaches aren’t sand, which is infinite.
Shingle is people counted one by one
By one. Tove drew the white light
With straight lines. It is almost unbearable,

Shining.

The light at the end of the earth is mellow
Like a fruit that can be had only there,
Scooped out like passion, fresh,
Shy to pronounce at first, like feijoa.
In crescents on the breakfast tray,
The pale pale color of peach moonstone.
Who cubed them. What was the original
Body, what flesh were we first, in our excess,
Sliced off from. The beach belongs to babies,

Bikini mamas, and the old. It is they
Who live always at the edge of that blade.
Toadstones, belly bling (remember?),
And that classic, the jewel in the head.
Well, everyone’s got one somewhere.
Ensoulment like a fine salt spray
Just crashing off that rock. The place
Where the ray hits may be anywhere.

Flash on the face, now stand up and walk.