Mark McKain

Belief at Low Tide

I hear a choir—a morning concert? Closer
the bodies dressed in white hymn on a wedge of sand. I pause

in palm-shade, a godwit probes the surf. A thin man reads
the black book and a young girl shelters

in the choir of larger bodies. Afraid. To disturb them. Drawn
to their mass. Stay shadowed, skeptical. Before the plunge

of the osprey, they take her hand out where eels submerge.
I hang on the horizon, distracted by bright clouds. (What is it

I now believe?) Fall backward—hair, face bathed, eyes immersed
in salt, in liquid light. Leave…before they lead me into the sky.


Mark McKain’s work has appeared in Agni, The Journal, Subtropics, Blue Mesa Review, Superstition Review, Western Humanities Review, ISLE, Gulf Stream Magazine, and elsewhere. His second poetry chapbook Blue Sun was published by Aldrich Press. He experiences global warming in St Petersburg, Florida.