David Dear 

 

Your black hair straggles
careless above your head,
a medusa mass drenched 

by tides unseen by you, head
half-buried in beach as if,
judged unseaworthy, you hid  

your face in shame as waves
tossed you up and onto
the empty stretch, confident  

no one would mind the crumpled
clump of you. Now in this,
your framed final disaster,  

the gritted sand teeths itself
forever on your sodden skirt,
your legs bend deferential  

to the salt-stained once white blouse
the camera caught you dead in,
and, strangely, your outstretched hand,  

reaching, it seems, to touch, just past
tideline, the grass, green and breathing,
eternally above water.