Half-Life

The sea in the shallows, from the pier to the point
Luminous aquamarine
Drops as vision ventures on
Into champagne-bottle green

The colors, exactly, trapped and preserved
In a frost of saltwater bleach
That bloom in this bowl of flotsam glass
combed from the trash on this beach

For the better part of a holiday now,
She's scavenged the bones and debris
To rebuild the past from bits of old glass
And the wreckage of old memories

There's a herringbone pattern of clouds in the sky
Like the sandy ribs left on the strand by the tide
And the sunlight's as fierce as the ocean is wide
Out here on Mustang Island.

She offers the Scotch, and watches the kids
With their shovels and buckets of shells
And recalls a lover, from before her late husband,
And a week in a beach-front motel

And that sad smile returns, and long elegant fingers
Clawing away at the sand
Revealing a mint-condition sand dollar
Placed like small change in her hand

She cherished that relic for its delicate scrimshaw
Of a starfish bristling with spines
Some proof of survival in the fossilized flower
On the flip side of the coin

There's a herringbone pattern of clouds in the sky
Like the skeletal skiff eaten smooth by the tide
And the sunset's a bloody maw, jaws yawning wide
Tonight on Mustang Island

She says she once read that the half-life of love
Isn't measured in years but in days
After that something brittle remains while romance
Like memory slowly decays

Now in this cancer therapy twilight
This prolonged half-life of her own
She regrets that she never for a day loved your father
While that boy died an old drunk alone

On the beach now those kids from Iowa
Tenants of the rental next door
Still rooting for sharks' teeth like they were digging arrowheads
A thousand miles from this shore

There's a herringbone pattern of clouds in the sky
Like the ghostly ribs left on the strand by the tide
And the night is as deep as the ocean is wide
Tonight on Mustang Island

There's a herringbone pattern of clouds in the sky
And the waves rolling in and the moon's riding high
And the night is as calm as the ocean is wide
Tonight on Mustang Island

Oh oh oh oh
Tonight on Mustang Island
Ay yay ay ay
Tonight on Mustang Island