Black Sand, Dedicated to Jacques Cousteau

Today, I feel like a pale, dead earthworm at the bottom of a lake, 

left over by a fisherman or a bird. 

Or a dead, rotting, pinkish gray eel,

Under a dark, dirty dock in a briny pond,

My soft belly facing upwards, my limp body rolls in the currents of the mostly still water.

I am only held together by my soft, weak spine.

In a few days, or a week,

Most of my flesh will rot off

And float away in thin, translucent flakes.

My remains will be consumed by a swarm

of small carnivorous snails 

And pale crabs, lightly covered in dirt and algae 

And the tiny, invisible, ghost like shrimp

That flick away with a light pinch at the curious fingers of children,

Who search and poke around the shallow salt water 

And brush over the rocks covered in grayish algae

And kick up the black sand and old pieces of seaweed.

The children will see no sign of me,

Only the tiny whitish debris of my decayed self

Which will wash over their feet unnoticed 

And by the time next summer when they return again

My bones will melt into the stinking black sand.