Surfers salted and tan came in from the ocean
to set their boards atop the stationary crests that
shaped to the sand shifting below
and rode the waves for hours.
Tourists lined up on the river's edge to watch them close up,
fascinated by the tensed crouch within arm's reach.
When you close your eyes and imagine the ocean's ideal wave,
you're not standing on the beach meeting it face to face,
but are at presence hovering above, as though in a boat,
but there is no boat, not even a visible shoreline,
just vast blue.
This view is the abstract you.
On TV an octopus finds a sunken Corona bottle half his size
that perhaps a tourist tossed off a fishing boat.
One leg circles the neck as though washing a pot,
and then all eight legs snake in,
followed by the beak and the eye,
closed, pushed through, and opened again.
Only the mantle swings in the deep, like a seaweed bulb,
like a heavy water balloon that in an instant collapses,
it's crumpled skin bulging against the rim
as it threads through, too.